Grow Up and Get Over Yourself. Really! Um, Like...Now!

Lalita Amos | 03/10/2008 - 14:58

I'm just going to paste this entire thing in. I can't bear trying to summarize this ludicrous turn of events.

This is an unbelievable story, but it's true. A janitor and part-time student at IUPUI, a college in Indianapolis, was told by the school's affirmative action office that he was guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about the KKK - a book about how Notre Dame defeated the KKK in 1924 - "in the presence of black employees." No, I'm not making this up. Read the letter that he received from that office in November of last year.

Sampson recalls that his AFSCME shop steward told him that reading a book about the Klan was like bringing pornography to work. The shop steward wasn't interested in hearing what the book was actually about. Another time, a coworker who was sitting across the table from Sampson in the break room commented that she found the Klan offensive. Sampson says he tried to tell her about the book, but she wasn't interested in talking about it.

A few weeks passed. Then Sampson got a message ordering him to report to Marguerite Watkins at the IUPUI Affirmative Action Office. He was told a coworker had filed a racial harassment complaint against him for reading Notre Dame vs. the Klan in the break room. Sampson says he tried to explain to Watkins what the book was about. He says he tried to show her the book, but that Watkins showed no interest in seeing it.

Then Sampson received a letter, dated Nov. 25, 2007, from Lillian Charleston, also of IUPUI's Affirmative Action Office. The letter begins by saying that the AAO has completed its investigation of a coworker's allegation that Sampson "racially harassed her by repeatedly reading the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan by Todd Tucker in the presence of Black employees." It goes on to say, "You demonstrated disdain and insensitivity to your coworkers who repeatedly requested that you refrain from reading the book which has such an inflammatory and offensive topic in their presence ... you used extremely poor judgment by insisting on openly reading the book related to a historically and racially abhorrent subject in the presence of your Black coworkers." Charleston went on to say that according to "the legal 'reasonable person standard,' a majority of adults are aware of and understand how repugnant the KKK is to African-Americans ..."

Sampson was ordered to stop reading the book in the immediate presence of his coworkers and, when reading the book, to sit apart from them.

Have these people lost their minds? Reading an anti-KKK book in front of black people is racial harassment? It's difficult to imagine a position more idiotic than that. And the sheer chutzpah of Lillian Charleston, the one taking that position, to accuse the employee of showing "extremely poor judgment"....I don't think we have words capable of capturing the depth of such stupidity.

I used to be an AA officer (I was a Black woman in a large HR department--where else were they going to put me) and some of my most often-used words were: "Grow up and get over yourself."

What I find personally disgusting is how like delicate, night-blooming flowers we've all become...and how lawyers have become the over-protective gardners, tending our delicate feelings. They don't much care about due process or crying "Cutitdafugout" when people have no basis to complain. What they are concerned with is making certain that they keep companys out of court--mostly for the little things. Besides, the ugly truth, as I see it, is that we've become a culture that's afraid of complainers--particularly Black or female complainers. We're more afraid of the complainers than we are about the reality of the complaints. It's chilled workplace relationships and those very people--people like me-- don't get the one-on-one coaching and mentoring needed to succeed, particularly when whites or men are afraid to close the door with just the two of you in it.

Trouble is, organizations like this where, just a few years ago, Black law students (I believe) were sent written threats directly to their mailboxes, miss the big picture which is: Focus on process issues and mitigate real wrong-doing. Stop being chicken shit about nothing.

Now, repeat after me: "Grow up and get over yourself."

See, that wasn't so hard.

By the way, Lillian Charleston, the brainiac behind this fiasco can be reached at lcharles@iupui.edu. I'm sure she'd love to hear from you. All of you.

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Lalita Amos | 03/11/2008 - 22:11 | The Author of the "Offending Book" Speaks

Thanks to Dispatches for tipping us all off about the fact that Todd Tucker, author of the book (Notre Dame Vs. the Klan) has spoken up. Here's what he said about this hot mess:

Freedom of Speech controversy at IUPUI

4:05 PM PST, March 7, 2008

Some of you may have heard about a recent travesty at IUPUI - a major, state-funded institution of higher learning in Indianapolis. A student-employee was found guilty of racial harassment for . . . . reading my book, Notre Dame vs the Klan.

Anybody taking five minutes to assess the contents of its page on Amazon could determine rapidly that the book is enthusiastically anti-Klan. You could perhaps argue that this shouldn't matter - a college campus ought to be a safe haven for exploration of ideas. But I do think it makes this situation even more outrageous that the good people at IUPUI's affirmative action office didn't care about that. My more recent book has as its heroes religious pacifists during World War II - I think it's safe to conclude I don't have any kind of right-wing axe to grind.

The stance of the Affirmative Action Office, it appears, is that any act is racial harrassment if they call it racial harassment.

This incident is getting a lot of attention, as it should. NUVO, the independent paper out of Indianpolis, gets credit for breaking the story. You can go to their website and read actual copies of the letters from the Affirmative Action Office. They are every bit as ridiculous as I describe.

http://catch22.nuvo.net/

This is truly ghastly and will probably get much worse before it gets better. Prediction: The "aggrieved co-worker" or her peeps will protest, demanding that the administration take action against the student janitor.

Crap! I lead diversity workshops and have read a stunning array of anti-semitic, anti-black, anti-woman--hell, anti-human--literature, all the while thinking that it was going to burn out my eyes or my ovaries or my thyroid glandmone fine day. Woe, though, to the poor toad who, thinking that he or she represents the PC Patrol, suggested that I read it elsewhere.

________
Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com/
http://totalteam.blogspot.com/

Lalita Amos | 03/11/2008 - 18:32 | Sometimes a Chair is Just a Chair

I re-read both of Ms. Charleston's letters and this is what I'm struck by: the "reasonable person standard" just ain't reasonable any more.

Intended to help investigators look through the prism of another group's experience rather than their own (notably for male investigators who had trouble seeing how a woman could be offended by, say, having her ass grabbed or being leered at), it has morphed into an "unreasonable person standard" whereby complainants are never asked to consider a more measured take on events. They just mutter "j'accuse" and the metal stud-filled snowball starts rolling.

In one case, I was called in to talk with a Black employee. Her complaint? Her white supervisor offered her a carton of chocolate milk. I waited while she marshalled her emotions, dabbing her eyes and choking back another onslaught for her to fill me in with the details I needed to be able to see what else happened that could cause her to feel so abused.

There was nothing else. A white chick in authority offered a Black chick a carton of chocolate milk. Did she offer choco milk to anyone else? Yeah, a couple, "but she made sure that she offered me the chocolate milk." Like a good AA/EEO wonk, I went out on the shop floor to talk with the supervisor-a woman with a sterling work history in a company that was none-too-friendly to women in non-traditional roles (printing). She was mystified that her employee got upset and walked off the job, leaving my office and heading home. The supervisor's intention? To make sure that this woman got a chance at what she believed was a premium milk beverage. Thinking back on how my brothers and I could "throw down" over the last bottle of Choc-ola, I could see her point.

Now, I said before that I used to be in AA/EEO. Wonder why I left? It just stopped making sense (aside from the fact that the real, live Klansmen were sure I was going to be unfair to white and the minority and female employees who were sure that I would robotically see their side as righteous). Workplace relationships (oh, hell, and reputations) were being destroyed and my peers in HR weren't helping. Sure, I wanted people to know that their complaints were going to be taken seriously, but I also wanted people to know that those accused were going to be accorded every bit of due process, missing in most HR departments, like this one. It galled me to note that rapists got a better shot at investigative fairness than someone accused of sexual or racial harassment or discrimination.

Sometimes, people, a chair is just a chair and we shouldn't be afraid to say so.

________
Lalita L. Amos, CRC
http://www.totalteamsolutions.com
http://totalteam.blogspot.com