Defending the Indefensible
13th April 2022
Our local paper had a news story today about an interesting lawsuit filed against Coastal Carolina University by a former employee. Erika Pomerantz (in white jacket at right) is a psychologist who worked in CCU’s counseling department since 2017. Then, in 2019, she alleges that the university hired a less qualified, less experienced counselor and paid her a higher salary than Ms. Pomerantz. Things started to get complicated when she complained to her superiors about this.
They informed her that the new hire was African-American, and that Ms. Pomerantz “presented as white”. I presume that her boss was shocked when Ms. Pomerantz didn’t accept this explanation. Ms. Pomerantz pointed out that she was a combination of Asian, Latina, and Jamaican – she was not white, and did not appreciate being treated as such. She filed a complaint of racial discrimination to the university’s human resources department. Soon afterward, she was treated even worse than that.
How long will it be before calling someone ‘white’ will be prosecutable as a Hate Crime!