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The Operations Supervisors of the other two production plants on site, as well as the equivalent manager in the maintenance department and the Human Resources manager, all white men, were bitching because the Plant Manager, another Caucasian male, said we were being "forced" to hire Blacks, but they didn't refer to them as Blacks (I'm merely reporting what I witnessed). They referred to them as "niggers" so that they could ensure one another that they were all on the same level and that level was higher, for some reason, than the "niggers" that they were about to interview.
We were also being asked to consider Hispanics. They referred to the Hispanics as spics. One member of the hiring team referred to the Hispanics as "gibbering idiots".
Finally, we were being "forced" to give women a chance to show that they could do jobs previously done by men only. They referred to women as "god damned split-tails".
For those of us who either thought or still think that name calling is the enterprise of second grade children, this exhibition of the scholarly use of the English language did/would change your mind instantly. The voice inflection was reminiscent of the sounds that would have been made by those very same second graders if recess had been cancelled for the day.
For me, this was a surreal moment. I had no idea that, in 1988, this was still going on. Not only was it still happening, but it was happening in the open, in the official conference room where a hiring team for one of the largest manufacturing corporations was meeting. It may not have been captured in the minutes of the meeting, but it was every bit a part of that meeting.
Sometime after that meeting, I rewarded a Black pipefitter with small bonus for going "above and beyond" to get the plant in which I was a supervisor up and running under an emergency situation. An hour later, my telephone rang. It was the maintenance supervisor. He asked, "What are you, Mike, some kind of "nigger" lover"?
This was in the "blue", liberal state of Connecticut.
This happened 33 years after Black Americans were legally allowed to sit in any seat on any public transport system in any state, 26 years after Black Americans were legally allowed to attend any public school in any state and 23 years after the government of the US finally got serious about outlawing the games that were being played in parts of the nation to keep African Americans away from the polls. I look back today and see future teabagger recruits.
We're having work done in our home. A contractor looked the job over last week so that he could give us an estimate. He said he'd get back to us. He said he'd bring his partner next time. He said, "Don't worry, my partner's White."
This is in the "blue" liberal state of California. I'm not sure if the man was "assuring" us that his partner wasn't African American or Hispanic, but does it matter?
Though it should be obvious that the above examples of prejudice are wrong, I fear that those examples aren't as isolated and unusual as they should be in 2011. In fact, as much as so called conservatives hated Bill Clinton, there were no large, nationally televised teabagger protests during his administration.
One might conclude that the above examples present proof that the laws that were passed by the government didn't work. One might say that all people should be given an equal chance to succeed, but not all people who are in the position to help people succeed should be required to do so. The government mustn't discriminate in favor of or against people based upon the color of their skin, their gender, their ethnicity or other personal characteristics, according to some teabaggers, but the government shouldn't interfere with a business owner if that business owner doesn't like those who are adorned in black or brown skin.
This is the private sector that so many teabaggers, not the least of whom is the Paul family, claim would be all too happy to be self regulating. I gave two examples. Employers in the private sector range form multinational, Fortune 500 mega-corporations to local small contractors.
The small contractor will obviously never hire non whites.
The corporation mentioned several times herein may never have hired African Americans, Hispanics or women if it wasn't for previous laws passed by the federal government. If a teabagger asks why the government of The FUSA is so "large and bureaucratic", that teabagger needs to be reminded that the federal government needs resources to do what the private sector won't do unless it's forced and what many states are too chicken sh*t to do.
Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice would never have become Secretary of State if the government hadn't previously passed certain laws.
