The racial discrimination lawsuit against Fox News is growing. It started when two African American women spoke out against the discrimination at the network, and now, just last week, seven other African American Fox News employees intend to join in on the lawsuit, according to New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman. But what happened to warrant such a lawsuit?
The racial discrimination lawsuit against Fox News is growing. It started when two African American women spoke out against the discrimination at the network, and now, just last week, seven other African American Fox News employees intend to join in on the lawsuit, according to New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman. But what happened to warrant such a lawsuit?
Well, in the original lawsuit filed a couple weeks ago in a Bronx Supreme Court in New York City, Brown and Wright claimed that they and “other dark-skinned employees suffered years-long racial animus from Judith Slater, a former senior vice president and company controller.” According to the lawsuit, Slater “ridiculed black employees by mocking stereotyped speech” and would even force them to “pronounce the words ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘month’ and ‘ask’ correctly in front of white employees.” Additionally, the lawsuit charges that, for years, Fox News allowed Slater to demean minority employees and subject them to “a racially hostile work environment without fear of punishment or reprisal.” On top of that, the New York Times reported that Slater would often make suggestions that “black men were ‘women beaters’ and that black people wanted to physically harm white people.”
However, perhaps the most horrific and appalling allegation is that, according to Sherman, “Slater demanded that black employees hold ‘arm wrestling matches’ with white female employees in her office, just down the hall from Ailes’s office on the 2nd floor of Fox headquarters.”
In response to the news about the alleged arm wrestling matches, a letter from the employees’ attorneys said, “forcing a black woman employee to ‘fight’ for the amusement and pleasure of her white superiors is horrifying.”
Since news of the allegations broke out, Slater has been fired by the network. However, some of the attorneys for the employees also insist that Tammy Efinger, an accounting director for the network, “be removed from a supervisory role as well because she, too, was involved in the racist actions, allegedly laughing along with the statements by Slater instead of intervening.”
Still now, Fox News has yet to comment on the matter.
Sources:
Black employees allege discrimination by Fox, say bosses made them arm wrestle white colleagues
7 More Black Employees Plan to Sue Fox News for Racial Discrimination: Report
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