Nooses and N-Words in East Texas

[marmar]

from Mother Jones:



Nooses and N-Words in East Texas
— By Tim Murphy

| Fri Apr. 16, 2010 2:39 PM PDT.


Via the Texas Observer, this may be the feel-bad story of the day. Late last month, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged a Paris, Texas, metal pipe factory with fostering a culture of Klan-era workplace intimidation (pdf), regularly harassing African-American workers with "unwelcome racial slurs, comments and intimidation, racial graffiti, nooses in the workplace and other symbols of discrimination." As one employee told the Dallas Morning News:

"I've been called colored boy, coon, monkey," said Dontrail Mathis, 33, a painter's helper at the plant in Paris who began highlighting racist conditions in December 2006. "When Obama won, they went off. My superiors said 'If he ain't white, it ain't right.'

"I saw nooses, swastikas on the wall," said Mathis, a father of three. "It was horrible."

When black employees—and a few white ones—approached management with their complaints, they were fired or ignored. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/04/nooses-racism-east-texas

[mmonk]

1. I've been watching the return of darkness in America and its acceptance.

[Dappleganger]

2. This is also East Texas...

they've always been like this, it's never left. Maybe 'dressed-up' for awhile, but the racism runs deep. My father's family is from there, we stopped going to funerals there because the crazy runs so deep.

[mmonk]

4. Sorry about that.

But has it been socially acceptable straight through the whole time?

[CTyankee]

7. I'm from East Texas and evidently so many settlers there in the early days

were Southerners who escaped from Sherman's army in the Civil War, like my great grandparents did from Georgia. I was told as a child "All your people are southern people" again and again. I left when I went to college and never went back to live because I wanted to live in the Northeast. I think there were members of my family that never forgave me (Texans disapprove of anyone leaving Texas who is native born...don't ask....)

[Ishoutandscream2]

8. Really, I have never disapproved of someone moving

Good for you.

[CTyankee]

11. Well, I think this is an old time thing...maybe not so much now,

but back in the 50s when I was coming up...we were taught to think that if you left Texas it was the worst thing you could do! I said the hell with that and left after college...been here in the northeast ever since...

[gateley]

5. Yes, its acceptance. That's what shocks me the most. nt

[RKP5637]

3. Bigots and racists are like cockroaches, you just can't seem to get rid of them. n/t

[gateley]

6. This just makes me so sad. nt

[pepperbear]

9. three words: mini tape recorder. n/t

[jpak]

10. Well at least it's not Vidor - teh shithole of all East Texas

who know?