Institutional racism

The past year saw a decrease in racial tension on the streets. But discrimination fights gripped city and state agencies.

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

Boston had its share of racial strife in 1998, but it wasn't racist graffiti, fights in the schools, or harassment in the public-housing system that had people up in arms. This year, the problems were within the marble walls of the State House and the sprawling concrete corridors of City Hall.

The past 12 months have brought reports of more-integrated neighborhoods, interracial cooperation at housing projects around the city, and teen organizations that have brought youth of all races together in a struggle against violence, drug abuse, and other social ills.

At the same time, however, 1998 saw numerous high-profile discrimination cases brought by employees of state and local government. Observers such as Roberta Edwards -- whose own case against her former employer, the MBTA, is still pending -- believe that city and state employees are speaking out in greater numbers about race, gender, and age discrimination because they are frustrated with poor working conditions, unfair promotion policies, and salary double standards.

For all the attention these actions have received, the total number of cases has not grown. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) actually shows a slight reduction in the number of complaints filed in the past year: state employees brought 336 complaints against state agencies, compared to 383 in 1997. Similarly, just 74 City of Boston workers filed MCAD complaints against their employer this year, compared to 115 last year. But, says MCAD chairman Charles Walker, that does not mean things are getting better.

"First, we have received complaints from higher-ranking individuals in state and local agencies this year," Walker points out. "Although no case is frivolous, the types of cases that have been filed have pushed agencies to realize they must reevaluate their antidiscrimination policies." In addition, Walker says, more workers are filing complaints within their own agencies rather than with the commission. One thing is for sure: plenty of city and state employees felt discriminated against this year, and many of them received a lot of public attention.

"The heavy publicity definitely assisted us in getting our message out," says Douglas Schwarz, one of three MCAD commissioners. That message: when it comes to discrimination, the agencies that govern and serve the public must clean up their own acts.

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At the end of 1997, it appeared that Boston was poised for yet another race struggle on the streets. In November of that year, the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) forced the eviction of three South Boston youths after they allegedly attacked Hispanic tenants in the Old Colony housing project. Leonard Alkins, president of the Boston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), applauded the action, saying that his office had received numerous complaints of racial harassment at the development. Old Colony residents and city councilors, on the other hand, called the BHA's decision to evict the teens' families an overreaction. The controversy seemed to bode ill for race relations in 1998.

But this year, tenants, housing managers, and political leaders say the days of racial hate crimes are over. The public-housing population is more diverse than ever. Residents of all races are working together in tenants' organizations, activities for teens are being offered, and partnerships with colleges and social-service agencies have improved the quality of life in the projects.

Now, formerly segregated projects reflect a racially mixed community: the Maverick development in East Boston, for example, has a tenant population that is 26 percent white, 21 percent black, 38 percent Hispanic, and 15 percent Asian. Only three times in the past six years have police had to respond to racial incidents at Brighton's Commonwealth development (formerly known as Fidelis Way), once one of the most troubled in the city. And South Boston's Mary Ellen McCormack projects, the second-largest development in Boston, had only a handful of incidents this year.

Yet discrimination has remained in the headlines as city and state workers fighting race, age, and gender bias on the job have dared to air their grievances.

The MBTA, the subject of many of those headlines, is no stranger to racial strife. Near the end of 1996, a group called Concerned Minority Employees of the MBTA (CME) began filing complaints and holding press conferences to bring to light what workers called serious racial discrimination throughout the agency. In 1997, MBTA management signed an agreement with the attorney general detailing what the agency had to do to end discrimination and improve the handling of discrimination complaints. But organizations including the CME, the NAACP, and the MBTA Civil Rights Task Force have publicly complained that T management is not doing enough to comply with the AG's agreement.

In January, Roberta Edwards -- the MBTA's former highest-ranking black woman, who was fired late last year in what she says was retaliation for speaking out against racial and gender bias and for filing an MCAD complaint charging gender discrimination against her -- went public with her case against her former employer (see "Disregarding Women," News, January 23). She has since filed suit against the T in Suffolk Superior Court. And two months ago, the MCAD ruled that there was probable cause in Edwards's original November 1997 complaint that she was discriminated against by two male supervisors. Currently, Edwards is also fighting a retaliatory libel suit from one of those supervisors.

Massachusetts police departments, too, have struggled with bias complaints, some of which were resolved this year. Edward White, a 60-year-old Boston Police veteran who has been on disability for 17 years, regained his job in October after the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the department could not keep him from returning to work. White, who had been fighting to get his job back since 1993, claimed he was discriminated against because of his age. The court also ruled that the Cambridge Police Department must rehire Robert O'Neill, who filed an age-discrimination suit claiming that he was wrongfully denied his job back after going on disability in 1972. A separate age-discrimination issue was settled on June 9, when a federal court ruled that state police cannot discriminate against older officers by demanding that they retire at age 55. State lawmakers had set the retirement age in 1991, after a merger of several police forces. More than 100 officers joined that suit.

But new charges emerged in November. Two black Boston Police officers claimed they'd been discriminated against for testifying on behalf of a fellow officer more than a year ago: they said they were retaliated against by supervisors for standing behind the officer, a white woman, in her own discrimination complaint. Sergeant Sheryll Pichon, a 21-year veteran and the first black female sergeant in the department, claims she was not allowed to work as a duty supervisor despite her qualifications. And Officer George Thomas says that he, too, was overlooked for supervisory responsibilities.

The cities across the river saw their share of discrimination charges in 1998 as well. In Somerville, the Department of Public Works has been under scrutiny since May, when several employees filed complaints of harassment and discrimination by DPW managers. In June, when Alderman Kevin Tarpley championed their plight, he drew accusations that he was trying to cause a racial divide within the city.

Additional allegations came in Cambridge, where five city employees filed discrimination complaints in late summer against either the police department or the city itself. Three city employees, all high-ranking minority women, filed a joint complaint with the MCAD charging abuse, intimidation, and unfair demotions based on their race or national origin.

Racial tensions also surrounded the resignations of two minority employees of the Cambridge School Department, Peggy Averitte and Gail Nordmoe, although neither filed a race-discrimination complaint. Averitte, the black former principal of the Agassiz School, resigned after a year of racial slurs, threats, and harassment. She ended up leaving town abruptly in June -- one week before she was scheduled to depart -- after someone set a fire beside her car.

Meanwhile, back in Boston, City Council president James Kelly could be setting the stage for an even bigger crop of employee complaints. Kelly, who decries the idea of racial hiring preferences in Boston's police and fire departments, spent the last part of this year fighting the city's affirmative-action policies. He has denied that racism played a role in the mostly white hirings prior to affirmative action's introduction in the 1970s, telling the press that black people simply didn't apply for those jobs.

"There has been no decision made about the affirmative-action policy, but you can bank on the fact that MCAD complaints are going to hit the roof if Kelly gets what he wants," says one City Hall official.

The MCAD agrees that more complaints will come, but officials feel their efforts have put them on a path toward decreasing the numbers. Commissioner Schwarz says that an intensified focus on educational programs, the reestablishment of human-rights commissions within state and local agencies, and the commission's hands-on work with government departments in the past few years are beginning to show results.

"Employers are starting to take antidiscrimination policy seriously," says Schwarz. "We just need to continue our aggressive work in enforcement and education and hope that next year things get better."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.