The hard truth is that when you find racism these days, oddly enough, it appears to be coming from the very people who so often insist they cannot even be racist, how confusing is that?
Eight White Teachers In Peoria, Illinois School District 150 File Civil Rights Lawsuit Alleging Chronic Anti-White Racial Discrimination And Abuse
A lawsuit alleging discrimination has been filed by a group of current and former white employees at Trewyn Middle School against Peoria School District 150 and retired Superintendent Ken Hinton.
The suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court, names eight employees who allege the district had a policy of discrimination against white employees.
According to the suit, the administration “adopted policies, practices and plans to increase the number of black teachers and staff within District 150; avoid lawsuits by black employees and citizens; and appease a large black community with numerous complaints.”
The employees are Tammy Williams, a special education teacher; Patricia Schmidt, a physical education teacher; Richard Trau, a retired PE teacher; Bonnie Wilson, a language arts teacher; Cathy Behrll, a special education teacher; Kit Zinser, a retired language arts teacher; Geraldine Warner, a special education teacher; and Jennifer Dougherty, a secretary at Richwoods High School who formerly worked in the same capacity at Trewyn.
Named as defendants are the School Board, Hinton, former Trewyn Principal Cheryl Ellis, assistant principal Charles Warr and current Principal Eric Thomas. All those named individually are black.
The suit appears to focus on the teachers’ objections to the way they were treated by supervisors and the policies at the school.
“I think the complaint speaks for itself. It alleges a hostile work environment and disparate working environment, as well as retaliation when they complained. It also points out that these white employees complained frequently and to everyone, and this school district ignored them,” said Patricia Benassi, the employees’ attorney. “If this was mostly a white community with blacks being treated the same as these white employees were being treated, then no none would question whether it was discrimination.”
Calls to interim superintendent Norm Durflinger weren’t returned Friday.
Among the allegations were that the white employees were told they did not “have the skills or the competence to teach black children because they are white.”
The suit also alleges retaliation against the employees after they reported problems to the School Board and to their supervisors. Hinton and the board, the suit alleges, “turned a blind eye and refused to take appropriate corrective action.”
This is what real racism looks like this days, and expect to see a lot more of this as we move further and further into Obama’s post-racial future.
