About two weeks ago, several busloads of activists left Philadelphia to join about 30,000 other demonstrators from across the country who wanted to show their support for the “Jena Six." As you will recall, the African-American high school students in the small town of Jena, Louisiana had been engaged in a physical confrontation with white classmates, after someone in the town placed three hangman’s nooses on the so-called “white tree” on the school’s campus. Following their confrontation, members of the Jena Six received unusually harsh and unfair criminal charges from the local district attorney, with potential sentences ranging up to 20 years in prison, for what was essentially a high school fist fight.
Thousands of other primarily African-American Philadelphians, who didn’t make the trip to Louisiana, also evidenced their solidarity with the Jena Six, by wearing all-black clothing to work on the day of the national demonstration. As in many other cities across the country, local demonstrations were also held in Philadelphia, wherein mostly young participants pledged their continuing support to fighting racism and injustice, wherever they raised their ugly heads in the future.
In light of recent events, it appears that if they wanted to demonstrate against hangman’s nooses and discriminatory treatment, the protesters didn’t really have to make the 24-hour bus trip to Jena, after all. It’s clear now that they only had to go to 17th and John F. Kennedy Boulevard, in Philadelphia, the site where the City’s largest office building, the Comcast Tower, is currently under construction.
Last Monday, a white construction worker at the Comcast worksite shook a hangman’s noose in the face of Paul Solomon, a black hoist operator, and, according to Solomon, said he “wanted to hang somebody.”
Curiously, the Philadelphia Police Department’s Special Victims Unit, following its investigation, said that the noose incident at Comcast Towers was just a “joke.”
It didn’t take much research to determine that the Comcast noose incident was not a joke at all, and certainly not an isolated incident.
To put the “joke” reference into context, it should be recognized that 3,426 black Americans in the United States – a greater number than the entire population of Jena, Louisiana – were lynched between 1882 and 1947. For the vast majority of those lynching victims the last thing they saw before they were killed by the mobs was a hangman’s noose. Understandably, therefore, there is little tolerance or acceptance of noose “jokes” by African Americans.
Solomon went on to explain that this was, as far as he knew, not the first noose incident on the Comcast site. Just four months earlier, another white construction worker, he said, was caught on camera hanging a noose at the project and had been fired.
To their credit, managers working for the project’s developer, Lincoln Property Trust, have spoken forthrightly about their intolerance for this kind of racial harassment, when questioned by reporters. The more important issue is whether the company will move to make the long-overdue systemic changes at their projects that will eliminate these cowardly, racist activities, once and for all.
According to construction workers who would only agree to speak anonymously to the city’s largest black newspaper, the Philadelphia Tribune, “Racial slurs are evident on construction sites throughout the Philadelphia area. You see it on almost every construction site…. There’s a definite racist climate.”
In fact, as early as the year 2000, Ida L. Castro, then – chairwoman of the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was moved to comment on the Commission’s filing of 20 racial harassment lawsuits involving hangman’s nooses in the workplace. Describing the odious pattern, Castro said: “Since the late 1990’s, EEOC has witnessed a disturbing national trend of increased racial-harassment cases involving hangman’s nooses in the workplace. These cases are not confined to a particular geographic area or region of the country. Rather, they are occurring from coast to coast and border to border.”
It seems that the two noose incidents at Comcast clearly fit the general, national pattern and point to a need to take immediate action by people in Philadelphia who want to see an orderly inclusion of blacks and other so-called minorities in the local construction industry.
Make no mistake about it, there is a certain element within the industry that has decided to try to intimidate black workers at Comcast and at other construction sites across the City, and so far, they have been operating with impunity. After years of aggressively precluding black worker participation in city construction sites, it appears that some in the industry have moved to “Plan B,” i.e., “If you can’t prevent them from coming to the work site, let’s insult them, disrespect them and do everything we can, including racial intimidation, to drive them away.”
That’s where the noose comes in. The knotted rope seems to be the modern iteration of the old Klansman’s hood, a symbol meant to frighten and intimidate blacks, to hold them down, drive them out, while providing anonymity to those who use it. It appears that, since the 90’s, hoods are out and nooses are definitely in.
If you think I’m kidding, consider this:
- In 1997, at an Indianapolis construction site, Tyrone Neal, a black construction worker, was subjected to racist graffiti on the walls of a workplace toilet, a hangman’s noose was dangled in front of his face and another noose was placed around his name on a welding machine.
- In 2001, in Miami, according to the EEOC, a technical operations manager at Adelphia Cable Company subjected black employees to racial epithets, placed a noose in his office and, on a company-sponsored “bring your child to work day,” hung the noose over his office door, where it was clearly visible to black employees and their children.
- In March 2002, the EEOC reported a settlement with Rockdale, Illinois – based Scientific Colors, Inc., in which the company agreed to inspect and remove any racial graffiti, derogatory references, images and photographs on a daily basis and to install video cameras in an effort to identify culpable employees. The racial harassment at the company has included graffiti and hangman’s nooses.
- In October 2006, according to an article yesterday in the Minnesota Spokesman – Record, an African-American- focused community newspaper, Tyrone Burns, a black boom truck driver for Winroc Construction Company in Bloomington, Minnesota, walked into the company’s warehouse and found a salmon-colored rope, tied in a hangman’s noose, dangling from a hook over his vehicle. Burns and a black co-worker, Marvin Dortsch, have filed a joint federal lawsuit against the company, alleging a pattern of racial harassment, discrimination and retaliation at Winroc. Coincidentally, the defense attorney for the construction company has referred to the noose as an “allegedly threatening rope” and Winroc’s managers initially told the two black workers that the entire noose incident was a “joke.”
- Just last week, federal investigators began to review an incident in the Hempstead, Long Island Police Department locker room, where a noose was found hanging from a ceiling pipe, apparently directed at Willie Dixon, a deputy police chief.
- Also last week, the head of the U.S. Coast Guard and a congressman visited the Coast Guard Academy to investigate the discovery of two small hangman’s nooses on Coast Guard properties, and
- On October 4, in the third incident of racial workplace intimidation in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area over a single, one-week period, a noose was discovered on a construction site in O’Hara Township.
If we are really serious about finally eliminating racial harassment on Philadelphia’s construction sites, here are several steps the City and State need to take immediately:
- In addition to a comprehensive minority workforce and contractor inclusion program, the City and State governments should adopt an absolute “no–tolerance” policy for racial harassment and intimidation, extending beyond the current, relatively ineffective, federal guidelines. Such a policy should be written into every construction industry project labor agreement, and should include strong accountability and repercussions, including permanent exclusion for individual perpetrators and contract cancellation and debarment for offending construction companies and developers.
- All racial harassment and discrimination incidents should be monitored. The data should be included as a component of a final project report to public funding sources.
- The City and State should establish a centralized “hot line” to be used by construction industry workers who experience racial / ethnic harassment or discrimination.
- All publicly funded worksites should have video cameras installed to capture any possible evidence of racial harassment or discrimination.
- All incidents of racial harassment and discrimination should be automatically reported to the EEOC.
In addition to these actions, we agree completely with Kevin Lumpkin, an African-American construction company owner on the Comcast site, who has said that racial slurs and intimidation continues at Philadelphia worksites, in part, because African-American workers won’t speak up. “They are afraid for their jobs and the backlash that will follow,” he said to a reporter at the Tribune. That, too, must change.
These steps, and others, will ensure that the long – awaited inclusion of African-Americans and other minorities in the local construction industry workforce will be carried out with minimal, future, job site antagonism.
The result should be a more harmonious growth in the overall capacity of the local construction industry workforce, a stronger local economy and a reduction of dangerously high levels of black unemployment.
What are we waiting for?
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