Last month, Fox News was hit with a racial discrimination lawsuit, among others, filed by two black female employees.
Payroll manager Tichaona Brown and payroll coordinator Tabrese Wright reported Judith Slater, comptroller, in what they called “top-down racial harassment” at Fox, referencing her comments, “including suggestions that black men were ‘women beaters’ and that black people wanted to physically harm white people.”
Since these allegations, Slater has been terminated. However, seven other black female employees are now planning on joining Brown and Wright in the lawsuit against the outlet.
According to a report from New York Magazine’s Gabriel Sherman, these additional employees also assert accounting director Tammy Efinger, claiming that she orchestrated arm wrestling matches aimed toward black female employees.
“Forcing a black woman employee to ‘fight’ for the amusement and pleasure of her white superiors is horrifying,” wrote the employees’ attorneys in a letter to Fox. “This highly offensive and humiliating act is reminiscent of Jim Crow-era battle royals.”
Read Also: Two Black Women File Discrimination Suit Against Fox News
This suit comes on the tail of Bill O’Reilly’s departure from Fox News following a string of sexual harassment allegations from a host of female employees.
This is a fact that may reveal the harmful culture surrounding Fox News and its inability to correct toxic behaviors that became embedded particularly during Roger Ailes’ tenure as chairman and CEO of Fox News.
It was in 2016 that Gretchen Carlson first filed a lawsuit against former boss Ailes, claiming unsolicited sexual advances and Ailes’ subsequent sabotaging of her career. This would catalyze a wave of similar claims from other females employees, eventually ending with Ailes’ resignation.
