Significance of argument and where it leads:
Combat discrimination in employment is enacted; there have been a shift in the ways in which discrimination operates in the workplace. As traditional social norms permitting overt racism and segregation give way to a modern norm of egalitarianism, and as well-defined, hierarchical, bureaucratic structures delineating clear paths for advancement within institutions give way to a globalized workplace of flexible governance and movement between institutions, discrimination often operates in the workplace today less as a blanket policy or discrete, identifiable decision to exclude than as a perpetual tug on opportunity and advancement. It often takes form in a fluid process of social interaction, perception, evaluation, and disbursement of opportunity. It creeps into everyday impressions of worth and assignment of merit on the job, lurking constantly behind even the most honest belief in equality, perpetuating the very injustice that we decry. A number of legal scholars have documented this shift in the nature of discrimination and have identified its significance to the project of achieving equity in the workplace.
This research would help to provide a conceptualization and to lay the groundwork for a legal theory that accounts for discrimination in the modern workplace. It suggests that regulation of some of the more complex, subtle forms of discrimination common in today’s workplace requires a focus on the operation of discriminatory bias as influenced, enabled, and even encouraged by the structures, practices, and dynamics of the organizations and groups within which individuals work. In other words, it posits the need to conceptualize discrimination in terms of workplace dynamics rather than solely in existing terms of an identifiable actor’s isolated state of mind, a victim’s perception of his or her work environment, or