Old-Time Racism Is Still Alive In Texas

As a person born and raised in Texas, I have to admit this story is more than a little embarrassing. At a time when our country is trying hard to defeat the hidden racism infecting the country, this company is still displaying an in-your-face type of racism reminiscent of the fifties and sixties. There is simply no excuse for this type of blatant racism to be rampant in a modern corporation.

Turner Industries is a Baton Rouge (Louisiana) based oil services company, but the offending branch of the company is located in Paris, Texas. The Paris branch employs about 700 people, with about 100 of them being African-Americans. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has found the company guilty of racist behavior.

The EEOC has determined "that on a regular basis. . .black employees were subjected to unwelcome racial slurs, comments and intimidation, racial graffiti, nooses in the workplace and other symbols of discrimination." They said the company knew of this workplace harassment and did nothing about it.

The company said its own investigation found no discrimination. Ridiculous! The EEOC had no trouble fining it, and displayed pictures of workplace nooses and racial slurs on desks and bathrooms. How could company officials possibly miss that?

But it gets even worse. The EEOC found that African-Americans received different, lower-paid work assignments, and they were denied the ability to get promoted into better jobs or supervising positions. Surely the company is not going to tell us they knew nothing about that either!

The company must now enter into conciliation efforts with the EEOC. If they fail to make necessary changes to the workplace and allow promotion opportunities equally to all workers, the EEOC can give the workers the right to sue the company in federal court.

I hope the company doesn't think a federal court jury will excuse their 19th century attitudes about the workplace, cause that just isn't going to happen. This is the 21st century and blatant racism in the workplace is not going to be excused by decent folks. The company must take this last opportunity to correct their behavior, or they're going to be paying a ton of money to the workers they discriminated against. It's their choice.