Dear Priscilla:

There is a lot of personal biases/ prejudice (“because you have the wrong skin color, the wrong body type, the wrong status” that you mentioned) going on, of course. One course of action is the legal route. When you evaluate specific incidents, sometimes the reasoning there is not prejudice but something else. In your example with your supervisor offering to help your co-worker with the flyers but not you, maybe his/ her reasoning was that she needed help and you didn’t, because you are more capable. Maybe. If the latter was the supervisor’s reasoning, it doesn’t mean that in other incidents the supervisor was not motivated by prejudice.

When it is one of the things you mentioned: skin color, body type, status (legal immigrant/ citizen, I think you meant), again, legal action is one way to go as practiced prejudice is illegal at the workplace for one. Before taking legal action, if you are not sure of the reasoning/motivation, maybe ask, clarify, verify?

anita