Tuesday 9 December 2008

Racism or Observation?

A former employee of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (Louisiana, US) is suing the state, claiming her supervisors used racial slurs and subjected her to a hostile work environment. Williams, who is black, filed her lawsuit in late November in Baton Rouge state court. She is seeking an unspecified amount of damages.

And what was the "highly offensive language" she was subjected to?

Andrea Maria Williams says in her lawsuit that one supervisor said of a black Federal Emergency Management Agency grant manager that “Black women always cry racism so they just let them do what they want,’’ and, “You know, it’s that black woman thing’’ and, “He’s afraid to tell her anything because she is a black woman.’’

So it turns out that this was not racism at all, but a series of simple observations on how easy it is to play the race card in the US.

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