Imagine you are a mom and you work a night shift. You come home, tired, and find a blackface doll hanging from a noose and racial slurs painted on your garage.
Your kids are asleep inside the house.
This is what just happened to Copa Burse, an employee at the John Deere plant in Ankeny, Iowa.
Woman finds racial slur painted on garage:
The Monday morning sun lighted a nightmare for Copa Burse.
She pulled into the driveway of her northwest Des Moines home after a graveyard shift at ag equipment manufacturer John Deere’s Ankeny plant at about 7:15 a.m. Scrawled in green spray paint on the white panels of her garage door were a mixture of profanity and a racial slur. A doll with the face, hands and feet painted black dangled in effigy from a cord on the garage door knob.
There was also a message: Quit her job at John Deere “or else.” Burse’s family, including her three children under age 18, were asleep inside the red brick house. Burse ran to the house and called 911.
Burse, who is African-American, drives a forklift for John Deere. She said she’s been dealing with racial harassment from co-workers for months. She believes this graffiti was a retaliation for a complaint she filed after she found a racial slur written on her locker at John Deere in May. Des Moines police are investigating the incident as a hate crime.
Workplace racial harassment doesn't just happen to African Americans.
A recent case just settled in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota involved AAs, Latinos and Native Americans.
Herzog Roofing To Pay $71,500 To Settle EEOC Racial Harassment Charge:
MINNEAPOLIS -- A Detroit Lakes, Minn., roofing company has agreed to pay $71,500 to seven black, Hispanic and American Indian employees to settle racial harassment and retaliation charges brought against the company by a former employee, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.
An investigation by the EEOC’s Minneapolis Area Office revealed that employees were frequently subjected to racial epithets, racial jokes and hostile treatment by other employees at Herzog Roofing, a commercial, industrial and residential roofing company based in a town of 8,000 in northwest Minnesota, the EEOC said. The harassment was largely perpetrated by supervisors and, despite complaints to Herzog senior management, the misconduct did not cease. Following an investigation of the discrimination charge, the EEOC determined that there was reasonable cause to believe the company violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In addition, the EEOC found that Herzog retaliated against the employee who brought the initial complaint by firing him after he reported the unlawful treatment.
Three years ago MSNBC had this story:
Racial harassment is up to record levels in offices and factories across the country, and we’re not talking just the use of the “N” word. Racist graffiti, Klu Klux Klan propaganda and even physical threats including the display of hangman’s nooses are included among the intimidation tools. “It is shocking that such egregious and unlawful conduct toward African American employees is still occurring, even increasing, in the 21st century workplace, more than 40 years after enactment of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964,” says David Grinberg, spokesman for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, also known as the EEOC.
Racial harassment cases have more than doubled since the early 1990s, hitting an all-time high of 6,977 in 2007, according to EEOC data. (Blacks file nine out of 10 race harassment charges.) From fiscal 2000 to 2007, the EEOC received 51,000 racial harassment charge filings nationwide, already over the number received during the entire 1990s.
The big racial harassment payouts tend to get the headlines. Earlier this month, Lockheed Martin Corp. agreed to settle a case and pay $2.5 million to a black electrician who claimed he was harassed on a daily basis. He was threatened with lynching and once told: "If the South had won then this would be a better country."
A look at current EEOC Statistics shows that charges have not abated. The good news is that more cases are being settled.
Justice is not color blind. We need more judges on the bench who are people of color.
Workplace Racial Harassment Decisions in US Federal Court Affected by Judges' Race, Study Finds:
PITTSBURGH—Long-held assumptions that the judicial decision-making process is always objective and color-blind is challenged by new research conducted by the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. A study of hundreds of U.S. federal court cases shows that the race of federal judges frequently affects the outcome of cases in the area of workplace racial harassment.
The researchers found that African American judges — which currently represent about 11 percent of all federal court judges — rule in favor of the plaintiff nearly 46 percent of the time, more than twice as often as White judges (20.6 percent) and the overall average plaintiff success rate (22 percent). This finding is the result of an analysis of a randomly selected sample of 428 federal cases representing 40 percent of all reported workplace racial harassment cases from six federal circuits between 1981 and 2003. Robert E. Kelley of Carnegie Mellon and Pat Chew of Pitt conducted the study.
[...]
The Case for a More Diverse Judiciary
Chew and Kelley believe that an underlying value of the study is its demonstration of the ability of judges to more keenly appreciate the perspective of plaintiffs who come from similar racial backgrounds. “The experiences of minority judges affords them valuable knowledge, perspective and understanding of minority plaintiffs and the subtle — rather than blatant — forms of discrimination that can be more prevalent today,” Kelley said. “If as a country we truly believe in judicial fairness, a more diverse bench is a good place to start, as it could increase the impartiality of the judicial system and yield more equitable legal outcomes.” While the study’s sample of federal judges from Asian American, Native American and other racial and ethnic groups was too small to make meaningful observations, the authors speculate that a broader analysis would document similar patterns of decision-making based on racial knowledge and experience for those groups.
Discrimination against women, GLBT's and people with disabilities are all equally unacceptable. If you think you or someone you know is facing on the job harassment your first step is to know your rights.
Harassment
Harassment is a form of employment discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, (ADEA), and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, (ADA).
Harassment is unwelcome conduct that is based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. Harassment becomes unlawful where 1) enduring the offensive conduct becomes a condition of continued employment, or 2) the conduct is severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive. Anti-discrimination laws also prohibit harassment against individuals in retaliation for filing a discrimination charge, testifying, or participating in any way in an investigation, proceeding, or lawsuit under these laws; or opposing employment practices that they reasonably believe discriminate against individuals, in violation of these laws.
Petty slights, annoyances, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not rise to the level of illegality. To be unlawful, the conduct must create a work environment that would be intimidating, hostile, or offensive to reasonable people.
Offensive conduct may include, but is not limited to, offensive jokes, slurs, epithets or name calling, physical assaults or threats, intimidation, ridicule or mockery, insults or put-downs, offensive objects or pictures, and interference with work performance.
In the case of Copa Burse, the harassment in the workplace has followed her home. It seems to be retaliation for her having filed charges. This is the kind of intimidation that black folks have lived with for centuries.
I honor her courage for continuing to pursue justice—for herself, her children, community and all of us.