April 16, 2007

Daphne Jones and Missouri State Representative Maria Chappelle-Nadal have known each other since they were kids.

So when Jones found herself fired after wearing an “I Love Being Black” button at her workplace, she knew whom to contact.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Representative Chappelle-Nadal said. “I was just astounded.”

Jones worked for Healthcare Strategic Initiatives in the St. Louis area as a reimbursement specialist.

A few days before Martin Luther King’s birthday, she says she put on several buttons commemorating it, including one that said “I (Heart) Being Black.”

She says she wore the button to work last year, too, so she wasn’t expecting any trouble.

But on January 11 at 9:30 in the morning, she says she got called into the office of the human resources director. A fellow African American, he was a man she thought she had some rapport with. Not this time.

“He said it has been brought to his attention that the button was offensive, and I’d have to remove it before I left his office,” she recalls, adding that he likened it to wearing a swastika to work.

“I said I don’t understand,” Daphne continues. “Workers here wear ‘I love being Irish’ buttons on St. Patrick’s Day. And he said that was acceptable. I said I was celebrating Martin Luther King’s holiday, and he said Martin Luther King was inclusive of all people, and he would not single out one individual ethnic group. I was totally taken aback. I stat there and I was stunned and very upset, and had to think if I wanted to remove that button or not.”

She reluctantly did so.

A few days later, she brought an attorney friend to the office, and he talked with the human resources director as well as one of the partner’s of the company, she says.

The next day, she was fired. She was told that the meeting had made the human resource director very uncomfortable, and that by bringing her lawyer to the office she was breaching the company’s confidentiality and the company’s grievance procedure.

Healthcare Strategic Initiatives did not return a phone call for comment from The Progressive or from the St. Louis American, which broke this story.

Jones, who has a new job, won’t say whether she is going to sue or not.

“This has been a very enlightening, eye-opening experience,” she says. “You still have your doubting Toms” who believe such things don’t happen in the workplace.

Representative Chappelle-Nadal wants to make sure they don’t happen again.

She has introduced a bill in the state legislature that would “require employers to give a written reason for why an employee is terminated,” she says. “And I want to ensure that companies that are found guilty of discrimination cannot get contracts from the state. It is paramount that we protect individuals in the workplace.”

Jones is gratified by Chappelle-Nadal’s efforts.

“It felt good to have the support,” Jones says. “She knew about it from day one, and she just took off with it.”