“OH, YOU BLACK PEOPLE”

No, that is not a quote from President Trump’s latest anti-fed employee executive order, but we can’t vouch for the drafts.  The words were uttered by a Postal Service supervisor. According to the EEOC, his exact words to an employee, Harrison, were, “You Black people think you can do what you want to do; not while I’m here….you and Sammy [another Black driver] are just the same.” The day after he said them, he effectively suspended the employee indefinitely.  Harrison filed an EEO complaint charging racial discrimination, which the Commission upheld because another supervisor testified that he overheard Harrison’s supervisor say at another time, ““Black people are a lot slower.  They don’t have the intelligence to do the job unless you tell them to do it.”  (Someone please check to see if that came from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 25 report.) The Administrative Judge ordered the agency to award…

Complainant $30,000 in non-pecuniary, compensatory damages as well as ordered the Agency to conduct training and post a notice at the facility.  Harrison appealed asking for more and he got it when the Commission said he was “…entitled to have the Notice of Emergency Placement connected with the Notice of Removal, the proposed removal notice and the suspension records removed from his personal file, as well as being entitled to back-pay for any time in which he was in an off-pay status as a direct result of these discriminatory actions until the date on which Complainant returned to work for the Agency.  We also find that the AJ should have included an order requiring that the Agency consider disciplining the Supervisor as the responsible management official for the discrimination.“

For more details, check out Harrison S., v.  Douglas A. Tulino, U.S  Postal Service, EEOC No. 2024001138  (2025)