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Workplace discrimination through social isolation and exclusion is a quiet, yet powerful form of discrimination that attacks your reputation and derails your career. These tactics can feel invisible to those who are not targeted, while having a profound impact on the victim who struggles to explain to others what is happening. If you are worried that you are being discriminated against, it's important to be proactive as a false narrative repeated by a discriminating party can quickly begin to shape your reputation and alter even long lasting workplace relationships.
In this post, we'll review how social isolation and exclusion are used to perpetuate workplace discrimination in a way that is subtle and difficult to prove.
Social Isolation: Discrimination that Attacks Your Reputation
Social isolation focuses on shifting the opinion of others to fit a narrative of who the discriminating party believes you to be. The discriminating party will utilize the subjective bias of others and the power of repetition to change the way others see you, including those you once thought of as your strongest allies.
This is carried out via repeated negative attacks on your character during conversations when you are unable to defend or explain your actions. As the person discriminating against you repeatedly highlights your mistakes and missteps, attributing each incident to a character flaw they already believe you to have, others may eventually find themselves accepting this narrative as fact. If the person discriminating can also control agendas and conversations to reduce any focus on your accomplishments or achievements, the negative narrative can take hold surprisingly quickly, undoing a reputation that took years to build in months or even weeks.
As an example, a new boss enters the workplace with a default belief that black men are lazy. As a result, when the black man on the team has to delay a presentation by a day due to a legitimate illness where he lost his voice, she assumes and tells others she believes the man just wanted a day off or had just procrastinated and needed more time. When the black man shows up late for a meeting after another call ran over the boss criticizes his tardiness in front of the entire team without giving him a reason to explain. This behavior is repeated and targeted at the single individual, ignoring any contradictory signs until the narrative that the man is lazy is accepted as truth by everyone around the man.
Exclusion: Discrimination That Blocks Paths to Success
Exclusion systematically removes you from the spaces and conversations where decisions are made.
If isolation is about tearing down your reputation, exclusion is about cutting off your access, manifesting as:
Being left off meeting invites or email threads.
Losing key responsibilities on projects.
Being assigned tasks that minimize your visibility or opportunities for impact.
The discriminating party removes your seat at the table and as a result you can’t advocate for yourself, showcase your skills, or build meaningful connections. In the long-term this exclusion can erode your career trajectory even if it originally appeared to be on the fast-track to success.
Following the same example above, as the new boss attacks the black man's reputation, she also 'forgets' to include him in important meetings and 'just doesn't think about him' when assigning a project that directly aligns to his skill set to another person on the team. Over time, the man has less and less opportunities to contribute or showcase his capabilities. As he becomes less visible on key projects, his peers also unknowingly contribute to the discrimination as they also leave him off of meetings and projects, mistakenly assuming he is either too busy or not interested in the work.
The Interplay Between Isolation and Exclusion As Discrimination
Social isolation and exclusion often go hand in hand, amplifying the harmful effects of one another. As your reputation is being damaged, you are simultaneously given less opportunities to contradict the narrative being told, which eventually serves to amplify the narrative that you are lazy, not a team player or unqualified.
This form of discrimination can also be particularly hard to disprove or fight back against, because people believe that the narrative is supported by evidence. As a result, those who now believe the discriminatory narrative double down, not wanting to believe they could be so easily manipulated by Oz hiding behind the curtain. And as this narrative of who you are spreads, even allies and former advocates become susceptible as more and more individuals repeat it.
As a result, you find yourself completely isolated and excluded from meaningful work. This doesn’t just sideline your career; it pushes you out as your access to promotions, raises and advancement opportunities is removed.
What to do if this is happening to you?
To protect your career you must first recognize that discrimination is happening, but once you do, you must acknowledge the toxic environment you're in so that you can strategically make a choice to fight or walk away.
If you decide to fight for the career and reputation actively being stolen from you, you'll need to counteract the negative narrative and find ways to stay visible. This can include taking initiative on new, unique ideas that you could own and run. Simultaneously, you'll need to document each targeted attack as you learn about them while being careful to not provide further ammunition for the discriminating party to use against you. When you are ready, you will need to provide this timeline to HR, presenting a compelling case that shows your workplace experience before and after the discriminating boss entered.
If you need help getting started or aren't sure how to build a discrimination timeline effectively, sign up for JustiProof. JustiProof walks you through the steps of documenting and building a compelling timeline that will drive HR to act and help you protect your career from workplace discrimination.
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