San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
LAWSUIT ALLEGES ANTI-BLACK CULTURE AT SCHOOL
5 current, former employees suing Southwestern
It has been 18 months since researchers from the University of Southern California exposed “a palpable climate of anti-blackness at Southwestern College” that included Black employees being called racial slurs and being overlooked for promotions.
And even though the South Bay community college has taken significant steps to address the report’s findings, a group of five current and former Black employees has filed a discrimination lawsuit, suggesting the problems persist.
The lawsuit references USC’S report and outlines the allegations made by the five employees, allegations that occurred before and after the report was published in June 2018 and mirror the researchers’ findings.
USC’S report highlighted individual instances, such as Latino custodial staff making monkey sounds at Black co-workers through walkie-talkies and a Black employee being relocated from the main campus because a White female coworker was afraid of him, that collectively painted a damning picture of institutional anti-black racism on campus.
Researchers noted that Southwestern College President Dr. Kindred Murillo was seen as a “clean-up president,” and employees responded well to her in that role.
The report ended with a list of 12 recommendations for the college, which enrolls 19,000 students, 72 percent of whom are Latino, 10 percent Asian, 7 percent White and 4 percent Black. Recommendations included
Vaccine development can take years, but, in something of a modern miracle, COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna could roll out to essential and health care workers and people 65 and older, in long-term care facilities and with high-risk medical conditions less than a year after this deadly pandemic began. Below, two people in vaccine trials and a doctor who had COVID-19 weigh in.