{"id":11679,"date":"2018-11-08T21:51:43","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T03:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=11679"},"modified":"2018-11-08T21:51:43","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T03:51:43","slug":"when-does-anti-racism-turn-into-scarlet-letter-labelling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2018\/11\/when-does-anti-racism-turn-into-scarlet-letter-labelling.html","title":{"rendered":"When does anti-racism turn into Scarlet Letter-labelling?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

This is an article from the Tribune a week ago that I\u2019d been\u00a0meaning to write about:\u00a0 \u201cCook County promoted former Chicago alderman once recommended for firing after allegedly saying, \u2018I can\u2019t stand these Mexicans\u2019<\/a>\u201d\u00a0 Its title in the print version is more succinct:\u00a0 \u201cCounty promoted worker after slurs about Mexicans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The long and short of it is this:\u00a0 former Chicago Alderman Vilma Colom worked for the county as a labor hearing officer in 2016 when two workers overheard a personal phone call in which she appeared to be saying things highly insulting to Mexican immigrants.\u00a0 They filed a complaint with the\u00a0equal employment opportunity officer, and initially<\/p>\n

The reviewing official recommended that she be fired, but Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle\u2019s human resources chief instead ordered that Colom receive sensitivity training and monitoring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Colom\u2019s explanation for the overheard phone call was that this was a personal matter which she felt obliged to deal with because of multiple phone calls which she had previously ignored over the course of that workday.<\/p>\n

[Colom] said several of her neighbors were on the other end of the line to discuss a building on their block that had squatters living in it, and they brought it to her attention because she is captain of their block club, the report said.<\/p>\n

She said she had a conversation with the owner of the building, \u201cwho is of Mexican descent,\u201d and said her neighbor told her, \u201cThere\u2019s too many of them in the apartment. What do I do?\u201d according to the report.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Colom further said that she had a hard time hearing the conversation, and repeated things her neighbors said, to confirm her understanding, and said that statements which her coworkers interpreted as insults were really just her repeating things in this way.<\/p>\n

Was Colom being truthful?\u00a0 Was she making up an explanatory story out of whole cloth?\u00a0 Was it somewhere in-between \u2014 was she angry at the squatter-family and less-than-cautious about her language as a result?\u00a0 What about her further explanation that<\/p>\n

members of the department might have been angry about a disciplinary case she overturned approximately six or seven months ago<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 is that credible?<\/p>\n

The Tribune\u00a0reports on the initial report and final outcome:<\/p>\n

\u201cBased upon the statements of complainant and witness #1, we find that (Colom) did make offensive comments about people from Mexico. Furthermore, we find that the comments were sufficiently egregious, given their nature and her position as a neutral party who is expected to hear cases impartially, that they rose to the level of harassment\u201d in violation of ordinance and personnel rules, the report said.<\/p>\n

In December 2016, [county human resources chief Velisha] Haddox reviewed the officer\u2019s report and concluded she could not \u201cin good conscience\u201d say that the \u201ctotality\u201d of the circumstances should lead to Colom\u2019s firing.<\/p>\n

Haddox said \u201cthe report describes a single incident in which an employee\u2019s private conversation was overheard and interpreted with very little context, if any, as offensive and as representing the employee\u2019s personal views. The facts to support this conclusion, however, are simply not present.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And, after all of this drama in 2016, why is this in the Trib in 2018?\u00a0 Apparently, someone wants to relitigate the incident.\u00a0 The only explanation given for the new reporting is that she was promoted \u201cin the spring to labor liaison officer, a $97,000-per-year position responsible for helping officials during collective bargaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what do you make of this?<\/p>\n

Should Colom have been fired in 2016?\u00a0 If she had been a private-sector employee, then, yes, her boss could have fired her for any reason, or none at all, or could just as reasonably taken her aside and said, \u201clook, it doesn\u2019t matter what the true circumstances were; you just can\u2019t ever say anything that anyone can misinterpret.\u201d\u00a0 But even in the private sector, employers are generally not in a hurry to fire employees just because of a single incident; they may not care about fairness and \u201cdue process\u201d but are generally decent enough to prefer to avoid to take away an employee\u2019s livelihood, and even if they\u2019re indifferent, would prefer not to go through the effort of finding, onboarding, and training a new employee.\u00a0 Maybe in the public sector the jobs are so desirable and performance expectations so low that this is a nonissue, and there are dozens of prospective employees who are ready to show up the next day, though I hope that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n

And once management has made the decision to enable her to keep her job \u2014 well, it simply doesn\u2019t sit right with me that, in the opinion of the reporter, at least, or whoever, at any rate, has decided that this is newsworthy, she must wear a Scarlet Letter, be forever ineligible for any career advancement, be tolerated until she has the good sense to find another job.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0 from wikipedia: https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3ASwear_jar_2.jpg; By Anna Frodesiak (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an article from the Tribune a week ago that I\u2019d been\u00a0meaning to write about:\u00a0 \u201cCook County promoted former Chicago alderman once recommended for firing after allegedly saying, \u2018I can\u2019t stand these Mexicans\u2019\u201d\u00a0 Its title in the print version is more succinct:\u00a0 \u201cCounty promoted worker after slurs about Mexicans.\u201d The long and short of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1119,1116],"class_list":["post-11679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-anti-racism","tag-job-harassment"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen does anti-racism turn into Scarlet Letter-labelling?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This is an article from the Tribune a week ago that I'd been\u00a0meaning to write about:\u00a0 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