Why is it so hard to prove racial discrimination in employement law ?

I am a California attorney and cannot give legal advice in your state. My comments are information only, based on federal law and general legal principles. YOUR STATE MAY HAVE ITS OWN LAWS THAT OFFER SIMILAR OR GREATER PROTECTION. If I mention your state’s laws, it only means I did a quick Internet search and found something that looked relevant. You MUST check with an attorney licensed in your state to learn your rights. It is quite rare these days to have absolute, direct proof of race discrimination or any other kind of discrimination. Employers pretty much know better than to put into writing they are taking or not taking action because a person is black, Asian, white, female, over 40, Jewish, has a disability, or whatever. That said, sometimes there are still smoking guns, so whatever it is you have in writing might be just what is needed to establish proof. Many things that lay people take as proof will not constitute legal proof. What you believe as "proof in writing" may be that kind of information. And some information cannot be admitted into court as evidence because it is deemed unreliable, such as hearsay. There are scores of reasons for most things that happens in the legal system. It is hard to respond with specificity to your question because it is so open-ended. Generally, a jury should consider all the evidence in the case and apply its own life experiences and common sense to that information, then apply the law the court gives the jury to the evidence. The jury does not have to be 100 per cent convinced things happened a certain way or for a certain reason. Sometimes the jury only has to be convinced a hair more than 50 per cent; sometimes more than that. It varies with the legal claim asserted. If you believe you have solid, written proof of discrimination, take it to one or more experienced plaintiffs employment attorneys for review. Attorneys want to find cases to work on -- that is our job. Attorneys are not generally fearful people. We voluntarily entered into an adversarial field and understand that it can be a lot of work to win a case for our clients. If you are having trouble finding an attorney for your case, there are several possibilities: -- you are not looking in the right place for the right kind of attorney; -- your proof is not as iron-clad as you think; -- your case does not have as much value as you think; or -- you are not presenting your case in a way that makes sense to the attorneys. Employment attorneys want certain information right up front: the name of the defendant, the name of the employee; if the employee was fired (or denied reasonable accommodation, or laid off, or whatever the issue is, in five words or less); the date this happened; the reason the employer gave for whatever happened; how long the employee worked for the defendant; what job the employee did; how much the employee made; and any deadline. You can find a plaintiffs employment attorney on the National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) web site www.nela.org. NELA is the largest and most influential bar association in the country for attorneys representing working people. You can search by location and practice area. Also, NELA has affiliates in every state and many cities which are listed on the NELA site. Not all NELA attorneys are named on the web site or affiliate site. This should not influence your selection; attorneys can choose whether or not to purchase a listing in the national directory, and each affiliate has its own rules for listing. I hope you can resolve your situation and wish you the best.