ASHLEY CSANADY

Jama Hagi-Yusuf has filed a human rights complaint against a Kitchener company that cited his Somali background in turning him down for a job last year.

A Waterloo, Ontario, man has filed a human rights complaint against a company he says refused him a job because he was told his Somali background embodies “a culture of resistance to authority.”

Jama Hagi-Yusuf had recently completed his studies at the University of Waterloo when he started looking for work, he told CBC News in Kitchener-Waterloo. One of his applications went out to a local financial services company. When they emailed him to say he hadn’t gotten the job, the response wasn’t your staid human resources missive, but instead referred to Somali culture. A year after the incident, he has filed an official human rights complain with a provincial tribunal.

“I don’t know how to reply back to that email,” Hagi-Yusuf told CBC News.

Hagi-Yusuf studied science at Waterloo and his LinkedIn profile now lists him as a student at the university’s school of pharmacy. Neither he nor the manager responded to requests for comment by publishing time.

He shared the note from J Sandy Matheson, an investment advisor with Integral Wealth Securities Limited, with CBC. It reads in full:

Matheson told CBC he wasn’t intending to reference Hagi-Yusuf’s background but simply that Somali culture was on his mind because of a recent article he’d read. CBC also notes the two disagree over how much contact they had. Matheson describes a phone call and other interaction prior to the letter turning Hagi-Yusuf down, while the latter says it never occurred.

“It was just something in the top of my mind, had nothing, I did not think him to be Somali,” Matheson told CBC. “He told me he was educated here and I knew that.”

Racism is a traumatic experience every time it happens

“There were norms within the industry that he was not meeting,” he said.

“I didn’t think the person was Somalian. The email was about how the person misunderstood the culture of the financial services world,” Matheson said. “The culture of lawlessness would make such people difficult to, find difficulty integrating into a country that’s founded for peace, order and good government was a subject of an editorial I read.”

That may not matter to the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, the body that will consider Hagi-Yusuf’s complaint. The provincial human rights code explicitly protects both “ethnic origin” and “place or origin” against discrimination.

According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s guide to understanding the code, “The right to “equal treatment with respect to employment” covers applying for a job, being recruited, training, transfers, promotions, terms of apprenticeship, dismissal and layoffs.”

The same guide also outlines a three-point process to determine if a situation actually violates the code — an example of what the tribunal will eventually consider. First the person must have a “characteristic” such a race or sexuality that’s protected by the code. Second, they much have experienced adverse treatment/impact within a social area (for example, in accessing a service, housing or employment).” And third the protected “characteristic” much have played a part in the adverse treatment.

For his part, Hagi-Yusuf said the effects of the situation linger regardless.

“Racism is a traumatic experience every time it happens,” he told CBC. “The fact that I’m Somali is something I’ve very proud of, and that he saw it as a negative factor rather than recognizing that my family came here as refugees.

“I went through university, I participated actively, I grew up in low-income housing, and didn’t see that as a positive and saw my Somali-ness, just being Somali as a negative, there’s lots of feelings towards that.”

acsanady@postmedia.com

Source: The Province