Glee and Sadness

I would really like to know what possesses people to think that this kind of behavior in the workplace would be acceptable in any context? If they aren't racist (and of course they claim they aren't) they are horribly stupid and deserve to pay far more than $1 million.

A black laborer for a pipe company in Conroe who contends white co-workers subjected him to racial epithets and choked him with a hangman's noose has won a $1 million settlement from his former employer.

'I find it very hard to believe that in 2006 we're finding incidents like this in the workplace,' said Cari M. Dominguez, the chairwoman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, who was visiting Houston Tuesday on other business.

Charles Hickman worked at Commercial Coating Services for seven months in 2002. Hickman, the company's only black employee, said his white co-workers -- including his supervisor -- started making racial taunts almost as soon as he was hired, according to the EEOC suit.

Then, one day one of his co-workers told him someone wanted to talk to him in the bathroom, the 37-year-old claimed in the suit. When Hickman went in, two co-workers were waiting with a hangman's noose, which they put around his neck and tightened, the suit alleged.

I went to college with a white girl (if you consider Italian white) who loved to make racial "jokes" about me in my presence. Let's just say that I wasn't really into her humor and after trying to be nice about it and requesting that she refrain from demonstrating her ignorance on numerous occasions, finally wasn't so nice about it and she finally stopped. Her initial response, though, was "You're no fun because you don't let me make fun of you because you are black." I never got what there was to make fun of. Is it like teasing someone because they are buck-toothed, pigeon toed, or taller than everyone else? People make fun of people's flaws and I hardly saw being black as a flaw. Ultimately, it seemed that she was obsessed with my race and simply could not say anything to me if she didn't make some reference to it. She also had a habit of trying to date black guys - just to make her family go into conniptions - then brag about how racist her parents were.

Of course, her behavior wasn't as brutal as the workplace harassment or the noose but I'm sure it started out simple and escalated - like domestic violence - into something totally out of control. When people say black people are being too sensitive or that we blow things out of proportion, we are really just trying to nip things in the bud before they bloom into something out of control. If you allow an inch, some people will take a mile. I'd rather be curt and to the point at the first instance, than all over you like white on rice with a stick or a lawsuit much later.