A federal jury has awarded $3.4 million to two men who charged they were subjected to workplace discrimination by a Bridgeport-based line painting company including aping and racial slurs. The company is appealing the decision. More on this from the Connecticut Law Tribune.
Yosif Bakhit is a Sudanese immigrant who was granted political asylum in the United States and later became an American citizen, according to his attorney, Lewis Chimes of Stamford. Bakhit was initially homeless and couldn’t speak English, Chimes said. But in time Bakhit got on his feet with the help of the local Sudanese community. He eventually landed a job with Safety Marking, a Bridgeport company that paints lines on highways–and removes them, as well–in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island.
Chimes explained that from 2009 to 2012 Bakhit experienced “horrible discrimination in the workplace.” He said coworkers often made ape comments to him. The N-word was frequently used by workers around Bakhit and he was called “boy” on numerous occasions.
According to court documents, a coworker pointed to a branchless tree and asked Bakhit if he could climb it. While workers were in a gas station’s convenience store, another coworker yelled Bakhit’s name and told him the store was selling two bananas for a dollar.
Full story here.
I think the court should have awarded them the whole damned company.
But it must be realized this type of 21st-century ugliness is a symptom of the socioeconomic rot that has proliferated in American society in the context of the “fertilizer” applied to the American economy under the brand name of “Reaganomics.”
This is the type of ugliness that is nurtured and which proliferates by way of hypercapitalism/globalization. This type of ugliness is what we’re seeing at Trump rallies. It is the result, in large part, of the global economic policies advanced by all the US Administrations from Reagan through Obama. Think SEATO, NAFTA, and now the TPP (which Hillary has persuaded the Obama Administration to place in abeyance, pending her presumed election). And it feeds into the mindless religious fanaticism that anchors the thought processes of the demonic minds of the Islamic jihadists.
We obviously have been deliberately led away from any real societal efforts to become a kinder, gentler society. In the past 50+ years, especially the past 35+, we have regressed about 200 years, and the trend appears to be accelerating during this election cycle.
When we vote in this year’s Congressional and Presidential elections, those of us in Bridgeport, and Detroit, and Flint must remember the line; “It’s the economy, stupid!”