On Saturday, December 3, 2022 at 10:22:50 AM UTC-6, micky wrote:
[snip]
> and she went in the next day and asked the same supervisor to help her
> figure out how to say No to the promotion without getting fired. The
> super said she'd take care of it. Than night, Cynd gets a phone call
> from the chairman, I think it was** and he said, You've been doing a
> good job the way you are. You don't have to change at all.
>
> So she didn't, and she even had a cross on the wall of her office.
...
> BTW, the EEOC that would enforce rules against racial discrimination was
> created in 1965, but as I recall, they only took obvious cases for 10 or
> 20 or 25 years, where Blacks were not hired at all. It was quite some
> time before they started worrying about indirect methods of not hiring
> them, or even iirc not promoting them. And I would guess that for the
> first 10 or 20 years, employers didn't feel the need to use indirect
> methods, the ones who didn't want to ust didn't hire them, despite the
> law, and it took that long for them to realize they can't get away with
> that anymore.
For the first couple of decades after the EEOC was established,
I do not think it was about "obvious" so much as the fact that it takes
some years for meaningful case law to develop
that fine tunes what is and what is not unlawful discrimination. Case
in point: Until 1986, making a work environment hostile on the basis
of race was not grounds for a complaint with the EEOC. E.g. an
employer who used the N-word regularly could not be held accountable
(or at least, no appeal went forward far enough to say otherwise).
In 1986, Vinson v. Meritor Savings Bank established for the first time
that a work environment hostile on the basis of race, sex, religion
(among other protected classes) could be unlawful workplace
discrimination.
The "intermediate level of scrutiny" for government discrimination
did not even exist until 1976. In Craig v. Boren, SCOTUS 1976,
then ACLU attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued on behalf of the
young men of Oklahoma to win the boys the right to buy 3.2 beer
when under the age of 21. (Females had been allowed to buy 3.2
beer at age 18. Outrageous.) Ginsburg's strategy back then revolved
around changing the level of scrutiny an alleged discrimination case
required in order for the case to be deemed unlawful discrimination.
I also happen to think government agencies very much reflect the
desires of the current president's administration.
Yes, I read about Cynt Marshall in advance of my first post. Though if
you want to suggest I made an assumption when you mentioned the
braids, then I plead guilty.
I have a legal problem with a cross on the wall of an office where underlings
might end up reporting. Today I believe an employer could nix such
a display and be on solid ground in doing so.
Did Marshall speak of the cross?
> Cynt was born in 1959. I thought she might have been too old to be
> covered by this law when she started working, but I'm way off on that.
> Time flies.
Trite though it may sound, Cynt Marshall appears to me to be amazing.
On the other hand, for a minority or woman to get ahead, I do not believe in the notion
that the minority or woman should have to look the other way (being superhuman)
at slights (and worse) directed at them. On the third hand, unlawful discrimination
happens all the time. In 99.99% of cases and for best outcomes, I now think that
the best outcome occurs by not rocking the boat. One should either
tough it out or go work for a different employer. One should leave
battles to those individuals or nonprofits with enough money to fight the
good fight.