One of the prettiest girls who has ever worked for me is Emily Yancy Ward. She is named after an aunt, Emily Yancy, who is an accomplished Broadway actress. Emily is the daughter of an Italian mother and an African-American father who is an insurance executive from Rhode Island.
Emily told us once how her
father had encountered a young harasser hiding in the bushes near the bus stop
where he caught his ride to work, but the kid was unsure what to harass about.
“You—you are a Jew!” he hissed.
Poor Emily, raised in the
gentile climate of upper class Rhode Island, had to go to Yakima, WA, to take the
statement of one of our clients, a man who had been sued for sex harassment for
his alleged conduct in his nephew’s bar. One of the allegations was that the
man had used profanity to the hired help. “Did you use profanity?” Emily asked
him
“No!,” he answered. “That’s
bullshit.”
Henry Faison became our
client. He had a complaint against the State of Washington, University of
Washington, hospital, for unfair treatment in his employment as a painter. Unfortunately, it developed that he had a past
criminal history of conviction for some felony, I don’t remember what, but
perhaps robbery. The UW determined that he was a risk to patients, although none
was ever left in a room still reeking of fresh paint. Never the less, the
University was willing to make a settlement offer. But when I called Henry, and
he answered the phone, he said it wasn’t he. “This is his brother,” he claimed.
We were not able to connect, and that was the end of the lawsuit and the
abandoned settlement deal.
But before it all ended, Emily
became aware that Henry was attracted to her. He was much older, or at least
appeared that way—he had likely lived hard. It wasn’t unusual, she told me,
that dark-skinned men were attracted to a lighter-skinned black woman. But
Henry said that when the lawsuit was all over, he wanted to take her out for a
Happy Meal. We were never sure whether
he was serious.
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