Employees Who Racially Harass Should Lose More than Just Their Jobs

Closely associated with lynching in the Jim Crow south, the hangman’s noose is one of the most powerful visual symbols that can be directed against black Americans.

The noose has been in the news quite a bit in recent months. Media outlets have widely reported the noose appearing in trees on college and high school campuses throughout the country. Black students, and their parents, are troubled by this disturbing “trend”. Most think, and rightly so, that the noose is being used to incite fear in students of color; these are essentially acts of domestic terrorism. Many local authorities brush the incidents off as pranks and have failed to acknowledge that these are, in fact, even hate crimes. Now we know the noose isn’t just a tool of terror used by immature students: It has been showing up in America’s offices and factories.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency created to end employment discrimination in the United States, there has been an increase in the number of racial discrimination and harassment complaints filed in this country in the last few years. Racial harassment complaints have more than doubled the past 17 years; about 7,000 complaints were filed with the agency in 2007. The hangman’s noose has appeared in several of these complaints.

In the last six years, more than 30 lawsuits that involve a noose being displayed in the workplace have been filed.

Some of the suits filed are quite disturbing and can easily transport African-Americans to another era. Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania case that alleged a noose was displayed and Klan videos shown in an employee lounges was settled for $600,000. In 2006, more than $1 million was paid to a black employee who alleged white co-workers placed a noose around his neck.

It’s somewhat comforting to hear that those who have been victimized are finding justice in civil courts. However, financial reparations are not all that is needed. Those who have committed these acts need to be charged with hate crimes; loss of a job is not enough. If this type of behavior is to end, the consequences must be stiff. Companies must increase the diversity and sensitivity training it offers to employees. Clear organizational policies that denounce and punish this type of behavior must be set and enforced; any sign of racist and prejudiced behavior should beaddressed immediately. Employers must also not attempt to cover for those employees who cross the line. In more than one case filed with the EEOC, when a company settled, a spokesman would say the settlement “indicated no wrong doing." By not firmly denouncing this type of behavior, the employer gives the offender -- and would be offenders -- the idea this type of thing is okay.

Racial tensions in this country are boiling over, if communities don’t ban together to bring an end to these insensitive and criminal displays, generations of work towards racial harmony may come undone.