If a person is treated unequally when compared to another person in a similar situation on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin, it may result in racial or ethnic discrimination.
What is racial discrimination?
Racial or ethnic origin refers to people who are defined by race, colour (darker or lighter skin), descent, national or ethnic origin. Sometimes this origin may be based on a shared understanding of history, territorial origin (regional or national), particular cultural characteristics such as a language or religion, or a shared sense of belonging to the same community, ethnic majority or minority, for instance, Slovak Hungarian, Jewish or Roma, etc.
The Slovakian law, in contrast to the EU directives, distinguishes between discrimination based on race or ethnic origin and discrimination based on allegiance to a national minority (národnosť in Slovak) or a nation (as ethno-cultural entity, národ in Slovak). There is no specific definition of race or ethnicity in the Slovakian law. However, in administrative practice národnosť (sometimes improperly translated into English as “nationality”) is mostly being associated with a group of people speaking a distinct language and having a common sense of historical identity and often maintaining ties to a kin nation in another state, while ethnic origin is usually understood as a characteristic in which cultural habits and social aspects dominate, sometimes combined with “race” (colour of skin), like the Roma or new, immigrant minorities.
Racial or ethnic origin or belonging to a national minority or an ethnic nation is distinct from nationality (štátna príslušnosť in Slovak), which is a person’s legal link to a particular state. In many situations, differential treatment on the grounds of nationality is allowed. For example, one might need to have a particular nationality in order to be elected to the Parliament or be recruited to the public sector. But in some situations, discrimination on the grounds of nationality is also prohibited. For example, in access to certain civic, economic or social rights. It might also lead to indirect discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin or religion or belief.
When can a violation on the racial grounds occur?
The prohibition of discrimination may be violated, when certain rights are denied to someone and they are treated better or worse than someone else due to their racial or ethnic origin. Moreover, there are different ways in which discrimination can occur, which is not always in a direct and overt manner. Therefore, it is important to recognize different types of discrimination.
Discrimination based on race or ethnic origin may take place in many areas of life such as employment, education, access to goods and services, and housing.
example Racial discrimination takes place when someone is refused employment, apartment rental or access to a nightclub due to his or her skin colour. For instance, where a person is not allowed into a bar due to their being Roma or Vietnamese or a person with black skin.
example In an education context, discrimination occurs in cases where someone is refused enrolment as a student in a private school, due only to his/her ethnic origin, and the school principal thinks that parents of other students will object to the presence of a person of this ethnicity. It is also discriminatory to place pupils into a special class, specifically due to their ethnicity. For example, pupils of Roma background.
Discrimination does not take place if there are other reasonable grounds to treat people differently.
example A person of Chinese origin is selected for a work-related mission to China, because he or she is more familiar with business practices there. A member of the Hungarian national minority (under the assumption that he/she speaks Hungarian) is hired as a waiter in a restaurant in South-Slovakia in a region densely inhabited by Hungarians to improve the service offered to both Slovak and Hungarian-speaking guests, as well as to guests visiting the place from neighbouring Hungary.
In this Guide, you can read more about the most common areas of daily life where discriminatory practices may occur.