New York Employment Lawyer Blog

In my practice as an employment lawyer in New York, I come into contact with a lot of people who think that employment discrimination does not exist. Often they are people who, in my opinion, are detached from reality and live insulated lives. My parents, for example, wonder what I do – they just do not get it – but they live in a wealthy white suburb and no one ever discriminated against them. But I think discrimination in New York and across the country is alive and well.

I think I first saw how bad it can be when I worked as a prosecutor in Los Angeles. I saw the hate, felt the racial tension, drove down streets during the LA riots with houses burning around me. I worked with some members of the LAPD that seemed racist – the same cops just happened to see minorities dropping bags of cocaine in front of them – over and over again – we had a name for it – Dropsy. Oddly white people never seemed to drop their cocaine in front of these guys.

But the most striking thing was the racial composition of the jails. When I visited the prisons, I was amazed – it was so obvious that the system was biased. My parents never went to the jails in South Central Los Angeles – most people don’t – it is an unpleasant truth that people do not want to face. I was embarrassed to be part of the system that did this to people. I think that is why I got into this work – representing plaintiffs in employment discrimination cases.