Black Workers and Los Angeles County’s “Anti-Racist” Racism

There has been mass outrage over the release of a tape showcasing the toxic anti-Black, anti-indigenous, violent, homophobic comments of L.A. City Councilmember Nury Martinez, fellow members Gil Cedillo, Kevin DeLeon, and now former L.A County Federation of Labor leader Ron Herrera.

Martinez’ KKK-worthy shit talk during a redistricting discussion with her three disgraced co-conspirators has elicited calls for their resignations.

Many have focused on the zero sum game of divisive Latinx political power mongering and efforts to disenfranchise Black constituents.

Read More: LA City Councilmember Nury Martinez resigns from office

But the incident also reflects a deeper pattern of anti-Black racism in City and County employment, as well as in Southern California overall.

Diversity “Equity & Inclusion”

This is despite the rise of a post George-Floyd “DEI” (diversity, equity and inclusion) industrial complex that has done little to redress conditions for rank and file Black workers.

Earlier this year, the Inland Empire warehouses of Cardinal Health and Ryder Logistics were named as targets of “the two largest racial bias cases brought by the EEOC in the last decade.”

The cases allege rampant abuse of hundreds of Black employees by Latinx employees and
employers who used the N-word, called Black folk monkeys, and slapped them with the most difficult and undesirable assignments.

Unsurprisingly, Black plaintiffs continue to comprise the largest number of victims in EEOC cases.

Read More: https://voiceofblackla.com/los-angeles-city-council-meeting-heated-after-nury-martinez-racism-scandal/

In July 2020, in the wake of Black Lives Matter uprisings around the murder of Floyd, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution declaring anti-Black racism a public health threat that “has reached crisis proportions.”

The resolution also cited systemic racial disparities in hiring, promotion, and workplace climate within the County.

As the largest and most racially diverse county in the U.S., L.A. County’s pledge to tackle systemic racism and anti-blackness appeared to be a good first step. In 2021, it created an Anti-Racism, Diversity and Inclusion Initiative (ARDI) to spearhead regional systems change across all County departments.

Black Employee Discrimination & Treatment in L.A County

A year later, the ARDI has convened multiple stakeholder workgroups and meetings with little transparency for or accountability to rank and file Black County employees who experience micro-aggressions and harassment.

Traditionally, the County has addressed employee discrimination claims through its County Equity Oversight Panel (CEOP), a body of attorneys and dispute resolution practitioners who are under the jurisdiction of the Board of Supervisors and the Department of Human Resources.

Unfortunately, employees who file claims against management often see these grievances languish for years in the CEOP without any meaningful information on their outcome.

A 2018 audit of the CEOP by L.A. County’s Auditor Controller revealed that “tracking
implementation of recommended discipline could be improved, departments often implement lower levels of discipline than recommended, and the timeliness of implementing discipline needs to be enhanced.”

According to the audit’s review of fifty cases from 2015-2016, full discipline was only implemented in 34% of cases.

Adding insult to injury, the average time for implementing discipline was a whopping eighteen months after a claim was submitted.

Hence, employees who file claims are essentially at the mercy of an unaccountable system that is subject to the whims of department managers.

As a result, bully bosses and serial abusers are often shuffled from branch to branch with few long-term consequences for their actions.

The County’s complicity in enabling bad actors is exacerbated by the virtual absence of mandatory anti-racist, anti-sexist, LGBTQI+ affirming training and professional development.

Moreover, for some departments, 2020’s so-called diversity, equity and inclusion wave has yielded little in the way of systemic change in rank and file workplace conditions.

Black Leadership Roles + Anti-Black Racism As Barriers in Employment

For example, there are no Black executive managers in the newly created Department of Economic Opportunity or the L.A. County Human Relations Commission.

These two entities play a key role in job pipelines and racial equity for the County’s vulnerable communities.

In organizational assessments ordered by the division, both entities were found to have “toxic” “cultures of fear” characterized by cronyism and hostile work environments.

The Human Relations Commission is one of the organizations that has been entrusted with the County’s anti-racism efforts. It is the oldest Commission of its kind in the nation, with “a legacy that dates back more than 75 years to shortly after the so-called ‘Zoot Suit Riots.”

Hate crimes against African Americans continue to rise (traditionally, African
Americans have had the highest rate of race-based hate crime victimization in L.A. County, relative to their numbers in the population), and prison pipelining, homelessness, educational disparities, and discrimination against Black students only intensifies.

Yet, the County’s primary “social justice” agency has no anti-racist initiatives that specifically focus on L.A.’s African American communities or schools.

Meanwhile, despite the Board of Supervisors’ vote to allocate 10 percent of its budget to “alternatives to incarceration” (a move the Board took after a judge ruled Measure J—a 2020 ballot resolution mandating that 10 percent of County funding go to social welfare investments—unconstitutional) it has waffled on making a full commitment to health, jobs, housing, and youth development in vulnerable communities.

The absence of targeted initiatives that address Black socioeconomic conditions is amplified by regional workplace disparities that cut across race, age, and gender.

Read More: https://voiceofblackla.com/holly-mitchell-asked-to-investigate-anti-black-racism-at-dpss/

A recent letter sent anonymously to Second District Supervisor Holly Mitchell alleged that patterns of racial and gender bias against Black women employees hinder them from promoting to managerial positions in the Department of Public Social Services.

In a 2017 L.A. Times article, a 58 year-old Black female L.A. County employee lamented the “career roadblocks” that have undermined job mobility for women in the County.

She describe being passed over for promotions and “unfairly penalized in performance evaluations.” These barriers exemplify the glass ceiling that some Black female County employees encounter.

A 2020 L.A. City Controller’s report on wage disparities in city employment also detailed the implications for Black women in L.A.’s public sector.

It concluded that they fared the worst among all city employees. For example, “Black women earn 25% less than the city’s average gross salary, while white men earn 21% more than the average, creating a gap of 46% between Black women and white men.”

The UCLA Labor Center notes, that this disparity continues even with greater educational attainment, as “almost 2 in 10 Black workers with higher degrees are
still earning low wages.”

These findings have disturbing implications for the professional mobility and generational wealth of Black workers in Southern California overall.

Nationwide, Black workers continue to bear the brunt of pandemic wage declines, layoffs, and career stagnation.

And while white, Asian, and Latinx workers have begun to rebound from pandemic era job losses, African American recovery has been glacial.

L.A. County’s failure to redress the systemic disparities Black workers face in the country’s largest county underscores how diversity, equity, and inclusion rhetoric can be yet another smokescreen for business as usual.

Sikivu Hutchinson is an author, educator, shop steward and a sixteen-year L.A. County employee.