Labor / Employment, On The Job, Racism

KKK Hoods: Fashionable In The Workplace And (Again) In The Streets

Are workplace harassment cases reflective of the larger society? 

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(Photo by William Thomas Cain/Getty Images)

As I noted before, the workplace is a microcosm of society at large, and both reflects, and sometimes magnifies, its faults and tensions, and can also create tensions in the greater society.  So nothing about the workplace lacks interest and everything about the workplace justifies close inquiry.

Unfortunately, recent events make it time to revisit the N-word in the workplace — which I wrote about only last month.  At that time, I called it “progress” that a federal appeals court had found that a single use of the N-word was enough to create a hostile workplace, and thereby constitute actionable harassment under Title VII.

Earlier, I wrote that “[i]t seems that racial harassment cases always have the same racial slurs and tropes: either the N-word, a noose, or both. Always. Although KKK hoods are becoming popular these days.”

Indeed.

In April, a company allegedly subjected black and Hispanic employees to “severe racial harassment, [which] included a noose, a Ku Klux Klan hood and racist epithets and jokes. Despite complaints by employees to … senior management, the offensive conduct did not cease.”  The EEOC sued and the company settled for $175,000.

I posited here a short thought experiment: “if you were a (rare) survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, would one swastika spray painted in your workplace be enough to create a hostile environment for you? Or one ‘Hitler’ scrawled on your work locker?”

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I wrote those words seeking not to juxtapose the two symbols or the people who brandish them, but simply to ask when the N-word, or KKK hoods, would be deemed just as harassing in the workplace as the swastika.

But in fact there has long been a connection between these symbols and “ideologies” — indeed, at a minimum, they traveled in tandem throughout the last century.  But the passage of just a few weeks since my previous post has given us a clearer understanding that the two have been or now are melded into the symbols of a dangerous, hydra-headed movement.

What’s the impact on the workplace?

Beth posted a timely piece here last week entitled What To Do If You Have Hired A Bigot, and there’s no need for me to rehash her fine advice to employers.  She wrote:

Most employees seem to understand that they should not do offensive things in the workplace. Most. But where this situation gets more difficult is when something happens, it isn’t at work, but it comes painfully to the employer’s attention. I imagine that at quite a few companies yesterday had to deal with this issue, because the Charlottesville tiki-torch bearers didn’t hide their faces, and made their opinions plain for all to see.

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Are Workplace Harassment Cases Reflective Of The Larger Society? 

I want, however, to underscore the workplace as microcosm by looking at the racial harassment cases either brought or settled by the EEOC within the last few weeks, and let readers ask themselves if this is a good barometer of society’s larger issues.

Just last week, a Massapequa, NY, company was sued by the EEOC in which it was alleged that black and Hispanic employees “were called the ‘N-word,’ ‘spics,’ ‘jigaboos,’ and ‘wetbacks.’ …  the company retaliated against employees who complained by firing them or forcing them to quit.”

And just days before that, a company in Washington State agreed to pay $160,000 to settle an EEOC suit which alleged that a black employee “faced repeated demeaning comments about his race, including the use of the ‘N word,’ ‘spook’ and ‘boy.’”

An EEOC Senior Trial Attorney said that “[t]his case served as an appalling reminder of the challenges that black individuals continue to face in the United States. Just last week, our office filed suit concerning racial harassment in nearby Oak Harbor, where the harassers used similar racially charged terms.”

Indeed, the EEOC in fact filed such a suit against a large sports retailer, in which similar slurs were used — as well as death threats.

That complaint alleged that at one store the manager and various assistant managers called the only African-American employee “‘spook,’ ‘boy’ and ‘King Kong’ and told him that he had the ‘face of a janitor.’ …  After he was forced to take several leaves due to stress, one assistant manager told [him], ‘We will hang you, we will seriously lynch you if you call in again this week.’ Another assistant manager asked Sanders if he was ‘ready to commit suicide,’ offering ‘assistance’ when he was ready to do so.”

And these were cases reported in the very blue states of New York and Washington.

Not to be left out, a California senior care company was alleged by the EEOC to have failed to protect a care provider by permitting her to be harassed by a client: she “faced daily harassment, including racially offensive remarks about ‘brown sugar’ and ‘black butts, requests to perform sexual acts, and lewd comments about her body. The client also masturbated in front of her and groped her when she performed routine tasks like helping him sit up in bed or cleaning him.”

Don’t Be Impatient — There Are Only Two More Cases

We are, after all, describing only a single month’s worth of such racial harassment cases.

The EEOC sued a Maryland firm for, among other things, retaliating against an employee who complained that “his supervisor had called him a ‘nigga.’”

And a North Carolina company agreed to settle an EEOC case in which it was alleged that a foreman and coworkers subjected an African-American employee “to racial harassment for almost two years. … [including] daily or almost daily use of the “N-word” and other racial epithets, as well as racial jokes about blacks. On more than one occasion, [he] was threatened physically by one of the co-workers who engaged in racist name calling.”

Takeaway

Beth said it best:

I am flabbergasted that people would run around donning Nazi and Confederate flags (right beside the U.S. flag!) without any thought for what this means for them after the event is over. … Open bigotry by an employee is bad for an employer, bad for business, and definitely a reason to hand out pink slips.  …  The laws regarding discrimination in the workplace will continue to exist, however. And if your conduct could be seen to break them, you will be fired or even not hired.

“One way or another, this darkness has got to end.”  (The Grateful Dead, 1970).

richard-b-cohenRichard B. Cohen has litigated and arbitrated complex business and employment disputes for almost 40 years, and is a partner in the NYC office of the national “cloud” law firm FisherBroyles. He is the creator and author of his firm’s Employment Discrimination blog, and received an award from the American Bar Association for his blog posts. You can reach him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @richard09535496.

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