I was in Paris, Texas last week working on a forthcoming story about racial disparities in school discipline when news broke locally that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had found rampant workplace discrimination against black workers at a Paris pipe factory.
“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.”
He said that despite the abuse, he still works for the company to help support his family, even though his sister and mother have been threatened.
In all, eight employees had their complaints upheld by the EEOC last month. Their attorneys say they have identified discrimination, harassment and threatening behavior in Turner’s other Texas facilities.
[…]
The abuse in East Texas is nothing new, said the Rev. Peter Johnson, a Dallas civil rights activist who spoke at the news conference.
“East Texas is Mississippi 50 years ago,” he said. “I’ve been doing this 40 years, and it’s frustrating to have to keep fighting discrimination.”
Jason Milligan, who is white, said he was fired from Turner in August after he refused to sign a false affidavit that claimed one of the employees who had complained about the company was stealing at work.
“Not all the employees there were bad,” said Milligan, a 37-year-old father of three. He said that since he was fired, he has had to take a job out of state to support his family.
“As a company, they need to stop living in the 1950s,” he said. “These people all have families, and it doesn’t matter what color they are.
“Enough is enough,” he said.
While in Paris I obtained this note that was left in the lunch pail of a white worker who spoke out against the racism.
And here are some photos of racist graffiti in the bathroom at Turner Industries.
A noose and Confederate flag were prominently displayed at Turner Industries in Paris.
The racial problems in Paris seem to never end. From ugly public lynchings in the late 18th and early 19th century to Shaquanda Cotton to Brandon McClelland to Bobby Yates – and now this. Maybe it’s time that the white establishment in Paris admits that there’s a problem.
![anarcho-queer:
NYPD Officer Blows Whistle On Stop & Frisk, Superior’s Told Him To Target “Male Blacks 14 to 21” (Must Read)
As hearings are under way to investigate New York City’s stop and frisk policy, one police officer is testifying that he was told by superiors to target young black men between the ages of 14 and 21.
Stop and frisk is a method of searching people in which a cop is able to stop someone he or she suspects of a crime, and is able to frisk that individual if they feel that there is some justification. New York City policy made 685,724 stops as part of the policy in 2011 alone. In total, they have made over 5 million stops, and 85 percent of those stopped were black or Latino. 88% were innocent, meaning they were not arrested or given a summons.
Officer Pedro Serrano, in court to testify yesterday, played a covert recording he’d obtained of an interraction with his superior where he was told the race of people to target, though not that he should stop everyone of that race:
Stop “the right people, the right time, the right location,” Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard saying on the recording.
“He meant blacks and Hispanics,” Officer Pedro Serrano, who made the secret recording, testified Thursday in Manhattan federal court.
“So what am I supposed to do: Stop every black and Hispanic?”Serrano was heard saying on the tape, which was recorded last month at the 40th Precinct in the Bronx.[…]
“I have no problem telling you this,” the inspector said on the tape. “Male blacks. And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem [to] tell you this, male blacks 14 to 21.”
During cross examination, City lawyer Brenda Cooke got Serrano to admit that McCormack never said he wanted Serrano to stop all blacks and Hispanics.
“Those specific words, no,” he told her.
The news about targeting black men tracks with yesterday’s revelations that the NYPD set quotas for arrests. It also explains the fact that, in 2011, NYPD made more stops of young black men than there actually are young black men in the city.
Serrano’s tape and testimony were introduced as evidence in a class-action lawsuit against the NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk tactic brought by four black New Yorkers who claim they were targeted because of their race.
Also, the first of several tapes surreptitiously made by Brooklyn cop Adrian Schoolcraft made its debut at the trial. The audio he recorded proved that the police department ‘manipulated’ crime reports to make to it seem like crime decreased in NYC.
After the NYPD found out about Adrian’s incriminating evidence, they broke into his apartment, handcuffed him and locked him in a insane asylum for 6 days against his will to silence him.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/33177e0620c7f29f77bb479a50d5718a/tumblr_mk3371kdHK1r4vpxio1_500.jpg)
