How do you show that a firing was racially motivated?

You get fired from your job, where you’d worked for five years. You believe that the firing was because of racial prejudice from your employer.

Naturally, though, your employer denies this. They provide other reasons for the firing. How do you prove that they’re not being honest and that it was racially motivated?

Documentation wins cases

Quite simply, documentation is what wins these cases. You need to look for “additional, independent factors” that go beyond the strict details of the case, and you need to document everything that backs them up.

For instance, just because you are a minority and you were fired does not mean you were fired because you are a minority. You have to show that your employer did not act fairly.

You can sometimes do this by comparison. For instance, pretend your employer has 20 employees. They need to downsize and let five of them go. Seventeen of the employees are white and three are of various minorities. When the five employees are let go, they include all three minority workers. This makes it appear that, by comparison, the white workers were not treated equally. Did your employer use downsizing as an excuse to fire you and the others?

You can document what happened, anything that was said, email messages and text messages that you got, and much more. All of it can help to support your case. These kinds of cases are notably tricky to prove without this type of evidence, so be sure you know exactly what steps to take to protect your future. An attorney can help you make informed choices.