Inappropriate remarks in the workplace still prevalent

According to a recent study on workplace ridicule, sexually inappropriate comments were heard almost twice as much in 2007 as they were in 2006. Novations Group, a business performance consulting group, and International Communications Research Media conducted a telephone survey of 546 employed Americans and found that 38 percent of women respondents to the survey heard sexually inappropriate remarks at work in 2007, an increase of 16 percent over 2006.
When asked what type of inappropriate comments they had heard in the workplace in 2007, 42 percent of respondents overall reported hearing sexually inappropriate comments, 35 percent reported hearing racial slurs, and 33 percent reported hearing ethnic slurs. Respondents also reported hearing individuals ridiculed based on their age (27 percent), based on their sexual orientation (23 percent), and based on their disability (10 percent).
I guess the good news is that disabled people are ridiculed far less than everyone else.
Overall, I would have to say that this survey, if representative of the workplace as a whole, demonstrates that we have a long way to go, and that we may actually be going in reverse. If sexually inappropriate remarks increased since 2006, then we may be teetering on the verge of an inclusion recession as well as an economic one.
Now I am willing to concede that surveys are not always representative of the overall working population, and I am also willing to concede that this survey may be highly subjective, as individuals have different definitions of what they consider to be inappropriate.
It could also be that women are just more sensitive than they were in 2006 to sexual remarks and found some sexual remarks to be inappropriate in 2007 that they though were “okay” in 2006. But does it really matter?
The fact that any sexual remark made in the workplace is just wrong. And the same goes for any remark about someone’s race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, or disability. These remarks don’t belong in the workplace at all because they tend to undermine the productivity and self respect of the victim of such remarks, and they also may threaten the victim’s sense of safety in the workplace.
The survey also found some of what I consider to be tepidly positive news:

• Employees 18-34 were more than twice as likely (38 percent) to overhear age-related ridicule than their colleagues over 55 (16 percent). Positive: age discrimination against older workers is moderately low.
• In general, employees with more education and income were less likely to hear any kind of workplace ridicule. Positive: Apparently if you received a degree of some sort you were also able to get a job in an industry where workplace ridicule was minimal (or your brain just filters that garbage out).
• On average, westerners heard less workplace ridicule than employees in the north central or southern regions. Positive: None, really. It’s just a good argument move west.

The good thing is that despite the bad news that people still make insensitive remarks in the workplace at a far too unacceptable rate, there is a cure for this sort of behavior that was revealed to the public in 1942 via the children’s classic Bambi:
“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” I really can’t put it any simpler than that. Just be good to each other, people. It doesn’t take much.