A recent story in the news attracted my attention. The headline was about a white manager who couldn't sue for racism on behalf of her fellow employees.
The case was before a US District Judge in Georgia.
It has relevance to me because I brought a lawsuit against the Bank of California in 1971 for racial discrimination against minorities and women. The lawyer on the case was Robert Gnaizda, who has remained a close friend of mine ever since. Bob put the case together with my help in finding a black and a white woman plaintiff.
Bob won the case, the most aggressive affirmative action class action before or since in America. He proceeded to get every major bank and financial institution including insurance companies to sign onto the judgment which required racial and women’s integration in top management. To this day, the financial industry is the best integrated of any industry outside of retail.
Bob wisely made the initial judgment to remove me from the case because whites were not really part of the anti-discrimination laws. That was a good decision, not validated until this recent Georgia case.
On the same subject, the lawsuit in Georgia was against Paula Deen and her brother. She recently made news because of this case in which she had admitted to using the six letter word for black beginning with N.
She becomes the second prominent media person to lose her job for this reason. The first was Dr. Laura an interesting radio personality.
Both of these women have my deepest sympathy. I worked for 11 years in a predominantly black church as business manager. Blacks referred to each other 10 times a day by the six letter word beginning with N. It had two meanings. It implied that the other person had authenticity. And it was used as a comic lighthearted appellation meaning the other person had overstepped racial boundaries. (‘you act’n like a n…..'a man.’)