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I recently joined a team as a technical team leader. The team I look after are all Indian and my manager is Indian. We all got on a zoom call and introduced each other. At the end of the meeting, my manager asked the team how they felt about a non Indian managing them. They remained silent.

This has nagged at me over the weekend and after asking various people I was told the statement was racist at worst and inappropriate at best.

At the same time my recruiter called me to check how I was setting in and I told him what she said. He got back to me and told me she was shocked and didn’t mean anything about it, but since then, the environment has gotten much worse to the point where I am already looking for another job.

I should mention that I am based in the UK as a contractor (not perm). I’m mulling over whether to take legal action on this (or if it’s even possible to so).

I don’t like making trouble but as I mentioned she’s being quite unpleasant in the days that followed and I’m not happy with how the situation was handled. I know in my bones If I said something like that, I’d be sacked without question, regardless of whether I was joking or not.

Any advice on this would be appreciated. Perhaps I’m being over sensitive.

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    What your "legal action" would be aiming for?
    – Greendrake
    Commented Mar 10 at 18:19
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    One notable bit of UK context. A key term in discrimination statistics and law in England and Wales is "Black and Minority Ethnic groups" (BME) which refers to non-White ethnic groups and generally, though not exclusively, to people of Indian or Pakistani origin (according to this source: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2718452).
    – ohwilleke
    Commented Mar 10 at 20:06
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    "feeling bad" isn't really something you get to sue for. Did you really think bitching about someone you perceived as racist to an outside party would help your situation?
    – Tiger Guy
    Commented Mar 11 at 13:40
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    They were trying to find out if there were any racist employees. How is that racist in itself? Isn't this something you would like to know about your team?
    – Barmar
    Commented Mar 12 at 0:01
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    @DesolatePlanet If the intent is to avoid hiring someone if there are objections from team members, that would be bad. But if the plan is to hire the person and find out which other team members need to be educated about inclusion, it seems somewhat appropriate. It also depends on the society -- I believe there are some where racism is common, and the team leader needs to take preemptive action to prevent it being a problem.
    – Barmar
    Commented Apr 10 at 15:10

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I should mention that I am based in the UK as a contractor (not perm). I’m mulling over whether to take legal action on this (or if it’s even possible to so).

To take legal action on your own behalf, you generally would have to show that you were personally harmed by some sort of action by the employer-general contractor motivated by discriminatory conduct. Alternately, you might be able to take legal action if whistleblowing or standing up for someone being discriminated against resulted in concrete harm to you.

The incident described with particularity in the question probably doesn't rise to the level of discriminatory conduct since it isn't clear that anyone was adversely affected by it, although the question implies that there is other conduct not described so specifically, which may be present.

Being "racist" or prejudiced isn't, in and of itself, illegal. It is taking actions that concretely harms others based upon those views which can be illegal.

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    Understood and thanks for clarifying.
    – Desolate Planet
    Commented Mar 10 at 19:41

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