A Step Forward for Racial Equality

[tskeeter]

Chicago's Brookfield Zoo advanced racial equility a step recently, when it terminated a black employee for racially insensitive comments the employee made in a Facebook post about members of another race.  True racial equality exists when we hold all people, regardless of race, to the same standards of behavior.   


my.chicagotribune.com/#section/2562/article/p2p-83741714/

[Phoenix84]

Glad to see they did something, all too often a double standard applies in these kinds of situations.

[Deleted]

I'm pretty sure they would have fired her over that post even if she hadn't made it racial. She was insulting customers and they gave the zoo feedback FAST!!

[Tennesseer]

Jun 11, 2015 10:45:30 GMT -5 tskeeter said:

Chicago's Brookfield Zoo advanced racial equility a step recently, when it terminated a black employee for racially insensitive comments the employee made in a Facebook post about members of another race.  True racial equality exists when we hold all people, regardless of race, to the same standards of behavior.   


my.chicagotribune.com/#section/2562/article/p2p-83741714/

Are you of the opinion this is the first black person ever terminated for making racist comments? If your answer is yes, then you really need to open your eyes and ears.

[tskeeter]

Jun 11, 2015 22:47:07 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Jun 11, 2015 10:45:30 GMT -5 tskeeter said:

Chicago's Brookfield Zoo advanced racial equility a step recently, when it terminated a black employee for racially insensitive comments the employee made in a Facebook post about members of another race.  True racial equality exists when we hold all people, regardless of race, to the same standards of behavior.   


my.chicagotribune.com/#section/2562/article/p2p-83741714/

Are you of the opinion this is the first black person ever terminated for making racist comments? If your answer is yes, then you really need to open your eyes and ears.

I'm not of the opinion that this is the first black person ever terminated for racist behavior.  I'm sure it has happened before.  But it is the first time that I have seen a report of such a termination.  And the first time that I have seen the press acknowledge that racism exists in the Black community.   

[Tennesseer]

Jun 12, 2015 10:13:54 GMT -5 tskeeter said:

Jun 11, 2015 22:47:07 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Are you of the opinion this is the first black person ever terminated for making racist comments? If your answer is yes, then you really need to open your eyes and ears.

I'm not of the opinion that this is the first black person ever terminated for racist behavior.  I'm sure it has happened before.  But it is the first time that I have seen a report of such a termination.  And the first time that I have seen the press acknowledge that racism exists in the Black community.   

I saw quite a bit of black racism toward others in my job. I was in HR and dealt with the warning letters and terminations for both black and white employees who made racist comments or sent racist emails. But I knew blacks could also be racist even before the Internet was invented. I must have read it in the newspaper at some point. It must be my age. I most likely have lived longer than you.

As for having seen a report for the first time-You saw the report because it hit Facebook. Sensational news items hit Facebook and other social media. But there are plenty of terminations because of racist and other bigoted statements. You just don't see them on social media. It may have been the first time for you to see the press acknowledge black racism, but I can assure you it has been reported quite frequently in the past. Expand your reading sources.

ETA: You link in the opening post is from the Chicago Tribune. Here is a link to a Chicago Tribune article written by Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune. He acknowledges black racism exists.

Are blacks more racist than whites?

So the press has mentioned black racism in the past.

[tskeeter]

Jun 12, 2015 11:15:13 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

Jun 12, 2015 10:13:54 GMT -5 tskeeter said:

I'm not of the opinion that this is the first black person ever terminated for racist behavior.  I'm sure it has happened before.  But it is the first time that I have seen a report of such a termination.  And the first time that I have seen the press acknowledge that racism exists in the Black community.   

I saw quite a bit of black racism toward others in my job. I was in HR and dealt with the warning letters and terminations for both black and white employees who made racist comments or sent racist emails. But I knew blacks could also be racist even before the Internet was invented. I must have read it in the newspaper at some point. It must be my age. I most likely have lived longer than you.

As for having seen a report for the first time-You saw the report because it hit Facebook. Sensational news items hit Facebook and other social media. But there are plenty of terminations because of racist and other bigoted statements. You just don't see them on social media. It may have been the first time for you to see the press acknowledge black racism, but I can assure you it has been reported quite frequently in the past. Expand your reading sources.

ETA: You link in the opening post is from the Chicago Tribune. Here is a link to a Chicago Tribune article written by Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune. He acknowledges black racism exists.

Are blacks more racist than whites?

So the press has mentioned black racism in the past.

While I doubt that you have significantly more life experience than I do, certainly your HR experience provides you with a different perspective on this issue than the perspective of those of us in the more generalized population.  I think that you'd have to acknowledge that since the HR profession wraps disciplinary action in a cloak of secrecy, while at the same time providing diversity training that has often implied that members of the majority must learn to appreciate and be sensitive to the perspective of minority groups, members of majority groups may not have a  particularly realistic perspective on racial equality and other diversity issues.  To some of us, it has not appeared to be very PC to claim that members of minority groups might be just as racist as members of non-minority groups.

And, yes.  Without a doubt, I have not seen the Clarence Page article before.  I haven't lived in Chicago for over 20 years, so do not make a practice of reading the Chicago Tribune.  I happened to come across a link to the original article through a media source other than the Chicago Tribune.  Given that the original article was a bit more sensational, because it discussed a termination of employment, rather than an op-ed piece, I'm assuming that the termination received broader media coverage than Page's piece.  While you are able to provide one reference that discusses the possiblity of racism by Blacks, I wonder how many other similar articles there are.  And how the volume of those articles would compare to the decades of reporting and writings on white racism against Blacks.  I expect that there is a substantial disparity in the number of articles that have taken one perspective vs. the other.  And that this disparity has been a factor in the perceptions that the general population has of what is PC and what is not.  Frankly, I find Page's recognition that racism, or prejudicial behavior, as Spike might refer to it, exists in the Black community and that the Blacks involved in the survey that Page uses as a reference report that Blacks are more racist than the other groups referred to in the survey is kind of refreshing.  It's the kind of reporting that might cause all of us to reconsider just how appropriate our behavior is.     

[Tennesseer]

Jun 12, 2015 12:47:58 GMT -5 tskeeter said:

Jun 12, 2015 11:15:13 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

I saw quite a bit of black racism toward others in my job. I was in HR and dealt with the warning letters and terminations for both black and white employees who made racist comments or sent racist emails. But I knew blacks could also be racist even before the Internet was invented. I must have read it in the newspaper at some point. It must be my age. I most likely have lived longer than you.

As for having seen a report for the first time-You saw the report because it hit Facebook. Sensational news items hit Facebook and other social media. But there are plenty of terminations because of racist and other bigoted statements. You just don't see them on social media. It may have been the first time for you to see the press acknowledge black racism, but I can assure you it has been reported quite frequently in the past. Expand your reading sources.

ETA: You link in the opening post is from the Chicago Tribune. Here is a link to a Chicago Tribune article written by Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune. He acknowledges black racism exists.

Are blacks more racist than whites?

So the press has mentioned black racism in the past.

While I doubt that you have significantly more life experience than I do, certainly your HR experience provides you with a different perspective on this issue than the perspective of those of us in the more generalized population.  I think that you'd have to acknowledge that since the HR profession wraps disciplinary action in a cloak of secrecy, while at the same time providing diversity training that has often implied that members of the majority must learn to appreciate and be sensitive to the perspective of minority groups, members of majority groups may not have a  particularly realistic perspective on racial equality and other diversity issues.  To some of us, it has not appeared to be very PC to claim that members of minority groups might be just as racist as members of non-minority groups.

And, yes.  Without a doubt, I have not seen the Clarence Page article before.  I haven't lived in Chicago for over 20 years, so do not make a practice of reading the Chicago Tribune.  I happened to come across a link to the original article through a media source other than the Chicago Tribune.  Given that the original article was a bit more sensational, because it discussed a termination of employment, rather than an op-ed piece, I'm assuming that the termination received broader media coverage than Page's piece.         

I don't live in the Chicago area either nor have I ever. But with a quick search of the Internet, I did find a press article about black racism. There are others out there.

Both black and white employees were disciplined for racist comments. And yes, we do keep disciplinary actions "cloaked in secrecy" as it is no one else's business but the manager, employee and HR when required. We don't discuss discipline with the general work force. But often times other employees have overheard the racist or biased comments and if the comments were so severe, the other employees probably noticed the one who spoke the racist words was missing for a few days or forever.

I will acknowledge that the employee who makes the racist or bigoted comment or state is usually a member of the majority group of that work group. That could be a white person, a black person, a Hispanic, a Christian, a Jew, a heterosexual or homosexual and so on. On occasion, a minority member of the work group may have been the one who made the racist or bigoted comment. Diversity training never focused on one group or another as we all knew and know no one group of people was innocent of racism and blatant bias.

[Tennesseer]

Jun 12, 2015 13:25:25 GMT -5 @tbird said:

Jun 12, 2015 13:12:55 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

I don't live in the Chicago area either nor have I ever. But with a quick search of the Internet, I did find a press article about black racism. There are others out there.

Both black and white employees were disciplined for racist comments. And yes, we do keep disciplinary actions "cloaked in secrecy" as it is no one else's business but the manager, employee and HR when required. We don't discuss discipline with the general work force. But often times other employees have overheard the racist or biased comments and if the comments were so severe, the other employees probably noticed the one who spoke the racist words was missing for a few days or forever.

I will acknowledge that the employee who makes the racist or bigoted comment or state is usually a member of the majority group of that work group. That could be a white person, a black person, a Hispanic, a Christian, a Jew, a heterosexual or homosexual and so on. On occasion, a minority member of the work group may have been the one who made the racist or bigoted comment. Diversity training never focused on one group or another as we all knew and know no one group of people was innocent of racism and blatant bias.

I don't think there is anything unusual about what you are saying tennesser, as most of us know.

The real oddity is the title of this thread. This isn't a step forward for anyone or anything....it's just another negative in a long long long long list of negatives.

I thought the same thing, Rukh. This isn't a game or some contest. Its not like for every 4 white people terminated one black person must be terminated. Tit for tat is not racial equality. Its just stupid and it just continues with no letup.

One only need read other anonymous message boards, social media sites and news articles to see that racism and bigotry is alive and well and racial equality is a very long way off. Fortunately, the few occasions racist and bigoted comments have occurred on our message board, the comments and the poster(s) have been swiftly dealt with.

But the employment termination of one black person is not a step forward in racial equality because there are thousands if not millions of black, white, and Asian people just like her still out there when it comes to issues of race.