Love the One You're With (15 page)

She's a diminutive woman (no more than five feet) with Milky Way dark skin, big light brown eyes, a cleft in her chin (“It's
real
, honey”), and a headful of auburn spaghetti braids that fall just above her waist. But don't let her size fool you: like Julia Sugarbaker on TV's
Designing Women
, she's been dubbed “The Terminator.” Many have underestimated her presence and power—and have lived to regret it. She may appear delicate and soft, but she can be tough, even vicious. She joined B-M-A three years ago and has never lost a case; she won three multimillion-dollar judgments and settled her last two cases out of court. (Her wrath has other lawyers running scared; it's rumored that
Your World'
s company attorney, Teddy Levine, bowed out of representing them because he lost to Jozette two years ago and wasn't about to suffer another humiliating defeat.)

Because of her reputation, Jozette believed we wouldn't have to go to trial. And after almost ten months of talk, it looked as if
Your World
was ready to strike a deal. I was praying they would be: I really didn't want to go to trial, for it would've proven too costly (both in terms of money and time). While I had a jood shot at winning and relished the thought of watching Jozette destroying every one of their witnesses on the stand, there was always the chance that my efforts would prove to be less than fruitful. The jury could find in my favor but award me only a fraction of what we asked for since I am young and the discrimination wasn't blatant. (As Jozette explained early on: “It wasn't as if you were finding dead rats in your locker, nooses hanging over light fixtures above your desk, and the word
nigger
spray-painted on your car.”) Or the appeals process could take so long that any monies I eventually received wouldn't be enough to cover my lawyer's fees. Or worse, I could lose altogether and really be left emotionally, spiritually, and financially spent. On top of the unknown outcome, I also would've had to take a leave of absence from my teaching job and I couldn't afford that (a “fuck-you fund” can last but so long). And, since I knew that few racial discrimination suits are successful (be it an in-court judgment or out-of-court settlement), the cons certainly outweighed the pros. But, as Pooquie argued, this was something I had to do: if I just shrugged my shoulders and walked away, that would give them the license to continue doing it and I would be indirectly saying it's okay to mistreat us because of who we are.

So I was more than pleased when Jozette called me last Monday, excited she had come across the evidence that would, as I've heard many a lawyer on television declare, “break this case wide open.” And it came from a source I certainly wouldn't have expected …

Phillip Cooper.

Phillip and I were barely speaking when I left
Your World
a year and a half ago, mainly because he decided to become the User-Friendly Negro—you know, the kind of colored person who won't rock the boat, who will go out of their way to make white folks comfortable, who will be as nonthreatening, nonconfrontational, non-
Black
as possible. His very accommodating manner was directed at one person in particular: my nemesis, Elias Whitley, aka the Great White Dope. No matter how nonsensical and stoopid Elias's position was (yeah, it was usually both), he could always count on Phillip to be his yes-man, going along with whatever he said. Phillip stroked much more than Elias's ego, though. I hadn't told Jozette about catching them fucking; if confronted, both would surely deny it, and it certainly had no bearing on my case. But I guess his arrogance got the best of him: being the only Negro on staff, doing the boss, and not believing what happened to me could happen to him went to
both
of his heads. According to
Your World
, his performance was unsatisfactory the first six months of 1994, and after he was placed on probation, it didn't improve during the rest of the year. He was fired three weeks ago.

Phillip tracked Jozette down to see if she'd also represent him. Problem was he didn't have a case for racial discrimination; Jozette had to control herself from laughing in his face when he related his tale, a story that sounded very similar to mine except that he didn't have the credentials or documentation to back it up. Judging from some of the comments made about him in his employee file (“frequently misses deadlines, research skills are elementary, doesn't pay attention to detail, writing is uneven and unfocused”),
Your World
actually ended up accommodating him: my lawsuit might've helped him keep his job longer than he should've had it (letting him go the same time they were served with papers would've been a real public-relations nightmare). But in his haste (or desperation?) to convince Jozette to take him on, he was all too happy to turn state's evidence on them. We already knew about my being paid less than Elias even though I had more experience (not to mention talent). But he did provide us with a piece of information that
Your World
had managed to keep secret.

Last September, Elias won an Eddy, sort of the Pulitzer of the education journalism world. I had been nominated three years straight and won my third time around. That Elias also managed to snag one—and on his
first
nomination—was shocking. And I gagged when I learned what he won for: a feature about a high-school program in Newark, New Jersey, where Black male teen fathers are schooled on parenthood. Given how much contempt Elias has for Black people (including the ones whose dicks he sucks), I found it hard to believe that such a well-written, thoroughly researched, incredibly incisive (if not pathologically themed) article could have been penned by him.

My hunch turned out to be correct: he didn't write the story. The article in question had been published some five years before. This was discovered by a student at Elias's alma mater, who was doing a profile on him for the school paper. When the student did a Lexis Nexis search on the program, he found himself seeing—and reading—double (it was originally published in
The Eye
, an alternative newsmagazine in Newark, and the Associated Press picked it up). It was the exact same story; Elias wasn't crafty enough to change the title, subtitle, or find out if any of those quoted still worked at/with the school (or, in the case of one of the teen fathers interviewed, was dead). When the student (who just happened to be Black!) notified the folks who hand out the Eddys, they stripped Elias of the award and demanded the $2,500 prize that came along with it be returned in forty-eight hours.

But that's just the tip of that iceberg. The student also discovered something else: Elias wasn't a college graduate. He dropped out of Yale during the latter half of his junior year. That copy of a diploma with honors (summa cum laude) hanging up on his office wall is a fake.

Now, after being exposed as a plagiarist and a fraud, you'd think
Your World
would have fired Elias. Well, they didn't. In fact, according to Phillip, one month after all these revelations, he was given a promotion
and
a raise. The entire editorial staff—which, in addition to Phillip, included Editor-in-Chief Steven Goldberg, Managing Editor Andrew Goodman, Assistant Editor Dennis Higgenbotham (he replaced Denise Garafola, a white woman who left a month after I did and would be a witness for our side), and Simon Churday, an Indian-American who filled my associate editor slot—met to discuss what action should be taken against him, and no one voted for his ouster. He only received a reprimand (i.e., a stern lecture from Steven) and a two-week suspension
with
pay. (I'm sure that if I or Phillip had been involved in such an unethical scandal and it was discovered that we lied about our education or experience, we would've been suspended without pay, if not fired on the spot.) Phillip claims he wanted to suggest a harsher punishment be meted out but feared doing so would've put his job in jeopardy (uh-huh … we know the
real
reason why). Two weeks after Elias's return (his suspension was just an extended Christmas vacation), Phillip was given his pink slip—and, yeah, it was delivered to him by Elias (and knowing how smug Elias is, if they were still fucking, he probably expected that to continue). So Phillip was all too happy to supply us with this ammunition.

Your World
was pretty confident that I wouldn't be able to prove a thing in court: they were betting the bank on Elias, their star witness, to portray me as the difficult, combative militant he saw me as. But now they could not call him to the stand: how could they argue to a jury that, when deciding who to promote to senior editor, a liar and a cheat was the best man for the job?
Your World
must have found out that we knew because, the very morning that Phillip provided Jozette with all the materials related to Elias's charade, their lawyer faxed Jozette an offer: $300,000. Yup, it was unacceptable. For Jozette, the most unacceptable thing was the dollar figure: given that they deliberately underpaid me and my efforts changed
Your World
from a dry textbookish magazine into an enlightening and entertaining publication for teenagers, she believed compensatory damages should include retroactive pay for doing a senior editor's job on an associate editor's salary, as well as the annual salary and bonuses I would've received had I remained with the company for an additional five years and been promoted the way I should've been. Adding punitive damages, the figure clocked in at a cool $3 million, with half paid upon signing an agreement and the other half coming a year later. Naturally, a third would be going to Jozette (or, rather, B-M-A).

I didn't care about the money; it might address the betrayal and disrespect, but it wouldn't redress it. I deserved and wanted an apology—and this was something they didn't plan on offering. In fact, their offer stated as one of its conditions that the settlement in no way meant that they were admitting any wrongdoing (the other was that I couldn't disclose the details of the agreement). I was doubly insulted: they fuck me over and then expect me to sign an agreement that absolved them of any responsibility for doing it and, by extension, forcing me to leave (while I did quit, I had no choice given the unfair treatment I received). And even with their backs against the wall, they were still more concerned with covering their own asses and keeping an incompetent Caucasian like Elias on board.

Jozette argued that they would messenger us over a check for the three mill before they admitted they intentionally wronged me. So we went around this by requesting two things that would indirectly tell the world that they did in fact discriminate against me and were taking proactive steps to make sure it wouldn't happen again:

       •   they had to hire a full-time affirmative-action officer

       •   they had to sponsor a college internship and writing fellowship program

Jozette had suggested that the other usual suspect—“sensitivity training”—be included on this list, but I nixed that. Such an exercise would truly be a waste of time and money. Can you really teach people to
be
sensitive? I don't think so. Having someone come in once a month to convince employees the way they've been conditioned to think and feel about a particular group is wrong won't help create a better working environment, it'll just foster resentment and fuel whatever indifference those who are white, male, and/or heterosexual have for those who aren't white, male, and/or heterosexual. Like my aunt Ruth says: “You can change the laws but ya can't change people's hearts.”

As they do with “sensitivity training,” companies also bring in an affirmative-action officer to fight or fend off accusations of racism, but it's usually nothing more than window dressing, a cosmetic addition that has no internal effect on the company's institutional policies. And given its track record,
Your World
would certainly follow that lead and practice another form of tokenism by filling this position with a person of color (more than likely Black) but not giving them the power to really do their job. But thanks to item number two, that wouldn't happen.

Our plan would require them to employ two high-school seniors of color as summer interns (one must be Black) and two college seniors of color as writing fellows, one during the school year and one during the summer (and again, one has to be Black). But they won't be able to just bring a couple of us in, stick us in a corner and give us next to nothing to do, then bid us good-bye at the end of our stint yet still count us as “staff” when those “minority” numbers are tallied (I've been there). Every two years, they must have hired and retained one of their summer interns as a contributing editor and a writing fellow as a staff writer or editor (or filled these positions with individuals from outside of the company with the help of the National Association of Black Journalists). The other departments, though, won't be off the hook: summer interns of color will also be familiar faces in graphic design, marketing, advertising, public relations, sales/subscriptions, and yes, even the mail room (which remains all white). And every time they award a fellowship and host an intern orientation, they will be reminded of who forced them to do it—and that would give me more satisfaction than a million-dollar settlement.

But, of course, it's those seven figures that most matter to Jozette. “This will make me a partner. Ha, it
better
, or
I'll
be suing for racial discrimination.”

I laughed. “You really think they're going to fork over three million dollars?”

“No. But you always gotta ask for twice what you think they'd go for so all the bases are covered. That way,
you
get a great payday,
we
get a great payday, and they
still
get screwed.” Her phone beeped. She picked it up. “Yes? … Good. Put him through.” She hung up. “Well, this is the moment of truth.”

I nodded.

Her line beeped again. She pressed a button. She smiled. “Stan, how are you feelin'?” Stan being Stanley Weitz of Kragen, Weitz & Brooke. His firm was representing
Your World
.