Bill O’Reilly may be gone from Fox News, but the network’s legal nightmare continues as a new lawsuit reminds us all that Fox isn’t just a den of misogyny and sexual harassment — they’re also racist as f*ck over there.
Last month, two black female Fox News employees from the payroll department — manager Tichaona Brown and coordinator Tabrese Wright — sued the network, alleging that comptroller Judith Slater subjected them to “top-down racial harassment.” According to the women, Slater was “making numerous racially charged comments, including suggestions that black men were ‘women beaters’ and that black people wanted to physically harm white people.”
That lawsuit is growing, with seven others from the department joining in the lawsuit. According to the new filings, Slater also forced African-American employees to “hold arm wrestling matches” against white female employees for her amusement in her office:
Next week, according to sources, seven black Fox News employees plan to join a racial discrimination suit filed last month by two colleagues. The original lawsuit alleged that Fox News’s longtime comptroller, Judy Slater, subjected members of Fox’s payroll staff to racial insults for years. (Fox News fired Slater in February after those employees began litigation against the network.)
Lawyers representing the payroll employees are demanding that Fox’s accounting director, Tammy Efinger, also be removed from supervising an employee because she allegedly participated in Slater’s racist behavior. In a letter to the network’s lawyers obtained by New York, the attorneys state: “Not once did Ms. Efinger step in or attempt to interfere with Ms. Slater’s outrageous conduct.” The letter adds, instead, “Ms. Efinger chose to laugh or giggle following Ms. Slater’s vitriol.”
The letter also includes new allegations of racism in Fox News’s accounting department. According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Slater demanded that black employees hold “arm wrestling matches’” with white female employees in her office, just down the hall from Ailes’s office on the 2nd floor of Fox headquarters. “Forcing a black woman employee to ‘fight’ for the amusement and pleasure of her white superiors is horrifying. This highly offensive and humiliating act is reminiscent of Jim Crow era battle royals,” the letter says, referring to the practice of paying black men to fight blindfolded at carnivals for white spectators’ entertainment. The lawyers argue that Efinger bragged about wanting to “fight” a black employee.
Fox News has yet to comment, but an attorney for the employees says that more complaints are forthcoming.
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