Over the past few months, there has been a significant amount of racial discrimination incidents that have gone viral. With the disgustingly bigoted chant that came from the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity at the University of Oklahoma, to the discovery of racist emails between Ferguson police departments and city officials, I’m having trouble remembering if the civil rights movement actually happened because it feels like we are moving backward instead of forward. It seems that everywhere I go, I’m always hearing some sort of discriminatory bulletin on the news or seeing it on my Twitter timeline.
With that being said, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Abercrombie & Fitch is in the news for a discriminatory act since they must keep up on the “latest trends.” Abercrombie & Fitch hurt its reputation in 2013 when CEO Mike Jefferies said he didn’t want “fat” or “not so cool” kids wearing his company’s clothes.
Just recently, Abercrombie & Fitch has been back in the spotlight due to a ridiculous offense that happened all the way back in 2008.
Samantha Elauf was a 17-year-old Muslim girl just looking for a job like most teenagers her age. She applied to Abercrombie & Fitch to work as a sales associate but was apparently denied a job because her hijab, or headscarf, violated the company’s dress code.
Abercrombie & Fitch is no stranger to discrimination cases in the past with the company paying $40 million to several thousand “minority and female plaintiffs” in 2005 to settle racial and sexual discrimination, among other lawsuits.
The case with Elauf will now be heard in the Supreme Court, brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC.
At the time, Elauf was interviewed at the store in Tulsa, Okla. when the sales manager Heather Cooke assumed Elauf wore the headscarf for religious reasons, but didn’t ask for her confirmation. Elauf was given a weak score in the “appearance and sense of style category” in the interview process, after Cooke consulted with a district manager. That manager told Cooke “employees were not allowed to wear ‘hats’ at work,” as stated in an article in The Guardian. Cooke told the manager Elauf was wearing the headscarf for religious reasons and was in compliance with EEOC guidelines when she didn’t ask about religion during Elauf’s interview.
Abercrombie & Fitch attorneys are arguing Elauf did not tell the company of her religious beliefs, saying “an employer must have actual notice that an applicant’s mandatory religious practices conflict with an employment requirement.” The EEOC fired back saying that “if actual knowledge of an employee’s religious beliefs is required by employers, companies could discriminate against employees because of perceived religious practices,” as presented in The Guardian.
It is 2015. Our society should be at the point in time where every single person is equal. It shouldn’t matter what you are wearing or what color skin you have. We should all be entitled to the same rights. Abercrombie & Fitch shouldn’t be so entitled to their ridiculous policies. A person of minority could bring some much needed change to a company clearly stuck in the past.
