February 28th, 2008
From the Orlando Sentinel…
Racial-harassment complaints shoot up
Darryl E. Owens | February 9, 2008In time for Black History Month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission disclosed its latest tally of racial-harassment cases.
And the news isn’t good. Cases of racial harassment reported to the EEOC jumped 24 percent last year, according to a report this week by USA Today. That’s a bump from 5,646 complaints in 2006 to 6,977 in 2007. Florida-based complaints rose from 388 to 471 over that period.
Whether the jump owes to an actual rise in racial episodes, or an increase in employees emboldened to come forward is unclear.
But what seems clear from the volume and the heinous nature of these complaints is this:
America, we’ve still got a racial problem.
Just last month, the EEOC settled a lawsuit against Henredon Furniture Industries. It said that for eight years black employees on an almost-daily basis faced slurs and were intimidated by hangman’s nooses left around the plant.
EEOC Chairwoman Naomi C. Earp, in a news release, said the case showed "racial harassment in general and nooses in particular, remain persistent problems at some job sites nationwide."
Nooses? What is this, 1866?
Last year, Americans became reacquainted with the noose as a despicable tool of domestic racial terror in the wake of the Jena Six controversy. The case involved six black males in Jena, La., charged with attempted murder after an assault on a white teen stemming from a schoolyard incident in which white students hung a noose from a tree. The case became a national sensation. So did the use of nooses.
Some 70 noose sightings were reported in the wake of Jena. An African-American professor found one dangling from her office door at Columbia University.
You can probably chalk up some instances to knuckleheads who reckoned a noose made a righteous prank. But the EEOC says racial jokes, ethnic slurs, and offensive or derisive speech violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
There’s no disputing that blacks’ place in America greatly has evolved since that act granted blacks the right to vote without facing poll taxes, dine at any restaurant and submit r?sum?s with at least a legislated shot at winning work.
And doubtless, attitudes that defined America then and earlier steadily are shifting into a shinier outlook. This makes the fact that the EEOC reports that racial harassment filings have more than doubled since 1991 all the more troubling.
It’s as if America can only run so far ahead with racial rapport before the leash of the past yanks us back.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project put it this way in the group’s winter edition of the report that monitors hate groups:
"Race relations are not doing well in America. Residentially and especially educationally, we are resegregating.
"Incidents of racial harassment in the workplace have been climbing. The number of hate groups has shot up 40 percent in six years," Potok said.
Those realities led me to participate on a panel on racial reconciliation last month in Eustis.
Change, we agreed, begins at home. And it means sweeping up the eggshells on which we walk when it comes to having frank talks about race.
In the end, real change in race relations begins when we graduate from mere tolerance to appreciation of what makes us different, and more importantly, the humanity we share in common.