[R]acial justice advocate Curtiss Reed Jr. was horrified by recent reports of racism at the Vermont Psychiatric Care Hospital, where one employee of color faced calls of “chocolate boy” and found the N-word scrawled on his car windshield, a second was told she commuted on “the welfare bus” and still others were tagged “nappy” and offered a stereotypical spread of fried chicken and watermelon.
Now Reed is concerned the state Department of Mental Health isn’t taking a remediation plan negotiated with the Vermont Human Rights Commission seriously — so much so, he’s asking officials to stop their current proposal to spend up to $10,000 on staff diversity training at the Berlin-based facility until they develop a larger, long-term agenda.
“There’s no directive that this is part of any overall strategy of inclusion and equity,” says Reed, who points to news reports about how the state’s last attempt at training spurred white workers to arrive with the watermelon. “The $10,000 would be better spent bringing on a consultant to help them develop a coherent and comprehensive approach. In the absence of one, you’re just throwing away taxpayer money.”
Reed, executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity, is interested in the issue not only as a leader of color but also as a longtime provider of bias-awareness and anti-discrimination training for the Vermont State Police and departments of Human Resources and Tourism and Marketing, as well as municipalities from Burlington to Brattleboro.
Reed figured the Department of Mental Health would at least ask his Brattleboro-based nonprofit to submit a proposal when seeking training bids last fall. Instead, the state opted to limit its invitations to three other unidentified entities. Reed’s organization nonetheless offered a plan. But this winter, all were told the department would reopen the search process — this time with a $10,000 spending cap.
Reed believes ridding the hospital of racism will require more time and money than a one-session training for management and staff. He notes after the release of the 2009 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights report “Racial Profiling in Vermont,” Vermont State Police launched what’s now a decade-long effort to educate leadership, new troopers and those in middle ranks.
“It has been a multiyear, multifaceted, multi-pronged process,” he says.
The Department of Mental Health is seeking a diversity training session for all 200 hospital employees on discrimination, bullying and harassment, such terms as “implicit bias,” and how to report and respond to problems and “contribute to the creation and maintenance of a healthy, cohesive workplace culture.”
Reed doesn’t believe a single presentation is going to stop the problem. He’s questioning whether the Department of Mental Health truly has digested the findings of the Human Rights Commission, which agreed unanimously last year that hospital employees of color had endured “repeated hostile, offensive and racist comments and actions” for more than a decade.
“You want to make sure your leadership team fully understands before you start working with employees,” he says. “But this training is not linked to any other initiative. It appears they’re saying, ‘We want you to parachute in so we can check the box.’ It’s a litigation-avoidance strategy and not understanding the complexity and length of time necessary for cultural change.”
Asked to respond, the Department of Mental Health offered its lawyer, Karen Godnick Barber, who says the upcoming training, coupled with an annual cultural competency program for all state employees, would satisfy the hospital’s needs. But her reasons for saying so are conflicting.
On the one hand, Barber says although the Human Rights Commission found reasonable grounds that the hospital violated Vermont’s Fair Employment Practices Act, the department continues to disagree with that ruling — although it says it can’t elaborate why because its human resource investigations are confidential.
On the other, the department, while denying allegations of a discriminatory work environment, says it only needs one training in part because of recent management shifts, including a new chief executive officer and director of nursing.
“I think we’ve done a lot just in terms of who is leading the hospital,” Barber says. “I think the entire culture has changed. In the past year there have been a few racism concerns but not to the extent that we had. From our perspective, things are going pretty well.”
Not everyone is convinced. Bor Yang, executive director of the Human Rights Commission, says “it is premature for the HRC to form an opinion” about the training plan, although her office “stands by the investigation and determination that there were reasonable grounds to believe discrimination occurred.”
For his part, Robert Appel, the former head of the commission, “wholeheartedly agrees” with Reed’s concerns.
“There has been entrenched racist behavior in that workplace,” Appel says. “You can’t wave a magic wand and in one training expect behaviors to change.”
Appel, a Burlington lawyer who represented the hospital employee who brought the discrimination case, says he continues to receive complaints from other staffers about racism “with some regularity,” including one this past week.
“The environment has lightened some after the HRC complaint, but it is still challenging,” Appel sums up the opinion of employees he has spoken with. “Unless you’re a person of color, you’re not going to realize there are micro- and macro-aggressions. People who do not experience the racist slights often do not understand the negative impact. A one-shot training in that environment is not a wise expenditure of taxpayer dollars.”
Reed has attempted to share the same concerns with Department of Mental Health officials, who emailed him “it would be improper … to meet with a potential bidder as it could confer an unfair advantage.” As a result, his organization is set to submit a letter of protest explaining its concerns in lieu of a proposal by an advertised May 24 deadline.
Reed understands some may view his objections as motivated by an interest in generating a larger contract for himself or someone else.
“The desire on my part is the rational expenditure of taxpayer dollars that would affect cultural shifts within state government,” he responds. “We need to be more strategic in how we spend. Some state agencies and departments already are doing the work. The Department of Mental Health is hopefully on the way, because what you get for $10,000 in the absence of a strategy is wasted time, energy and taxpayer dollars.”