The E-RACE Initiative(Eradicating Racism And Colorism from Employment)

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The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has championed equal opportunity in employment since its inception, shortly after the signing of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although the Commission has been successful in its enforcement efforts, race and color discrimination continues to exist in the workplace. In an effort to identify and implement new strategies that will strengthen its enforcement of Title VII and advance the statutory right to a workplace free of race and color discrimination, EEOC is instituting the E-RACE Initiative.

E-RACE Objectives

The E-RACE Initiative is designed to improve EEOC's efforts to ensure workplaces are free of race and color discrimination. Specifically, the EEOC will identify issues, criteria and barriers that contribute to race and color discrimination, explore strategies to improve the administrative processing and the litigation of race and color discrimination claims, and enhance public awareness of race and color discrimination in employment. As a framework for implementing the E-RACE Initiative, EEOC has developed a set of detailed E-RACE goals and objectives to be achieved within a 5-year timeframe from FY 2008 to FY 2013.

Additionally, the Commission will combine the objectives of E-RACE with existing EEOC initiatives. For example, the Commission will integrate the goals of the Systemic Initiative by addressing race and color issues with class and systemic implications. It will incorporate the principles of the Youth@Work Initiative by combating disparate treatment of youth based on race and color. And, the Commission will complement the outreach and enforcement efforts of the LEAD Initiative by challenging exclusionary employment policies that adversely impact people of color who also have disabilities (in both the private and public sectors).

Finally, the Commission will strengthen partnerships with employee advocates and state and local human rights commissions and increase its outreach to human resource professionals and employer groups to address race and color discrimination in the workplace.