The New York State Commission Against Discrimination reported yesterday that bias against Jews in the areas of employment, public accommodations and publicly-assisted housing has dropped substantially in recent years but still represented a major portion of cases handled by the agency.
Charles Abrams of the Commission said that 4,685 complaints have been brought to the agency since it was started in 1945 and 567 of these involved Jews.
Asserting that discrimination against Jews, “while diminished, has not been eradicated,” Commissioner Abrams said such biased behavior toward Jews “is not always due to prejudice on the part of personnel managers or executives, but frequently may be attributed to the surviving vestiges of old practices.”
More than three-fourths of the Jewish complaints involved jobs, including such complaints as refusal to hire, conditions of work and practices of job agencies. Abrams said 85 percent of all cases were filed in New York City. Abrams said that the commission sustained the complaints of 82 of the 504 cases brought by Jews and closed by the agency.
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