My very scary brush with reverse racism. How I almost became the next Permit Patty.

[DeadSlash]

Honestly,  I am not even really sure why I'm telling this story.  I just want to get it out because it makes me so... I don't know if it's more angry, or more afraid.  I just want to talk about it.  I actually wasn't even allowed to speak about this (because of legal ramifications, that to be 100% honest, I don't really understand.) but everything has run it's course.  

 

This is the story of how I almost became another "Coupon Carl"/ "Permit Patty."  In my case, it would not have been justified.

 

    Without a full back story, the bottom line is that I teach a course offering a valuable skill to students that if they pass the test in the end, they get an actual certification, and a job.  I do it all over the country, and the wage range from $15 to $24/h.  I have been doing this for almost a decade, and I have never had an issue like this.  It is a 5 day class, 8am - 3:30pm.  This is a class for adults.  These classes happen all around the country, so we usually rent hotel meeting rooms etc.

 

    This particular class was about 10 minutes from one of our main offices, the incident occurred on day 3 of said 5 day class, I had 19 students, 16 were black (This matters later.)  It is very common for people to not finish, so from any given class of 20,  5 quitting at different points during the week and 15 making it to the end is pretty typical.  On this particular day, 3 girls who had no prior issues in the class, came in late, around 8:50.  The first issue they created was speaking at regular volume, and continuing their discussion as they walked in, as if class was not going on.  They went to their seats and continued to speak at regular volume as they divided up food from McDonald's.   I actually stopped class, and I was looking at them.  The entire class was, actually. 100% of the time in the past, this was signal enough for an adult learner to know to stfu.  One of the girls looked up at me, saw that class had stopped, and looked away and continued her conversation at regular volume.  A few students noticed this and there was some awkward laughter as we were all kind of thinking "WTF?"  I am a very patient man, and I was about to say something when they completed their conversation and, with food sprawled out in front of them, class resumed.  The interruption was about 2min.  It felt like longer, but it was 2:11. (I'll get to how I know the exact time in a minute.)

 

    About a minute after resuming the class, girl #3 who was seated at a different table than 1 and 2 stands up, and loudly calls out to the other girls if they have the bag with the sauce.  The 3 girls begin discussing how much they like sauce across the classroom as girl number #3 makes her way over.  This is the middle of a lecture, they start having a regular volume (elevated volume, honestly) conversation.  At this point, somewhat befuddled, I say "Hey, guys? C'mon, class has started." One of the girls who was the spokesperson from that point forward replied "This ain't your concern, you don't need to be all up in our business."  

I said "Well, it kinda is because I'm trying to teach a class and you are interrupting my class."

The woman replied "Bitch, I said this don't concern you."  (At this point there are a few shocked gasps and a uncomfortable laughs from the rest of the class.

I replied "Excuse me?"

She said "You need your ears checked?"

 

    Now, at this point, it's probably important you understand that this class is done as a service.  Nobody there is paying, but if you or I wanted to go through this course, it would cost just under $700.  As I mentioned earlier, it ends with you having a job if you pass the exam.  At this point, I explained that "I'm not sure what your impression of this class is, if you think this is unrelated to the job, but it is very much so.  <My company> will not vouch for you as a good potential employee, I don't care what your score is, if this is how you conduct yourself. This is not professional."

She said "You are not professional."

I said "You can leave, I will wave any fees associated with not completing the class." Sort of a shady thing the company does to keep people vested, because the class is HARD, is to tell them that if they don't come to all 5 days they will have to pay for the materials (we don't actually charge them.)

She replied "You can leave."  

I said, "Ok, this is crazy, you need to go.  You have disrupted class for too long."

She said "You can go."  This went on for about 45 more seconds where whatever I said, she literally repeated back to me.  I made the decision on the fly that if they didn't want to leave, they could sit there as long as they weren't talking, because I needed to resume class.

 

    About 5 minutes later, she stands up and the other 2 stand up and she says "Ok, so I'm leaving, because you are a racist and I'm uncomfortable here.  These girls are my witnesses, and I'm going to have you fired."

I said "ok."  and they left.

 

    After they left, I waited for the door to close, and I said to the class "I'm sorry you had to see that dark dark side of me." and the class burst out laughing, not so much because of my comedic timing, but it was just a really tense situation.  It was said sarcastically, as I really hadn't done anything wrong.  I was extremely professional the whole time.  One of the students in the back (also black) said "Hey, if they really try to get you in trouble, I've been recording your class, so they can see what really happened."  I wasn't worried in any way shape or form at that point, and I said "Thank you!"  Turns out that was critical and saved, at the very least, my job.  (It's also how I know exactly what was and was not said.)

 

    About 2 hours later, the door opens and there is our HR Director, someone to take my place for the rest of the class, and a person who was basically my peer.  The  3 girls had gone back to our office, cell phones recording as they confronted my company for having "known racists" in their employ.  They said I was using slurs, the one who acted as the spokesman in class said that she "politely" asked me if I "needed to use that kind of language." I reacted by ejecting her from class and calling her slurs directly, including the n-bomb.  The were all "Too shocked" to record anything, but the other 2 girls were "ready to sign statements" and could not sit by after witnessing my racism.  They demanded I be fired that day, or they were going to put <my company> "on blast" on social media.

 

    The HR director was in that office on that day, the owner was in flight and unreachable, and the HR director panicked and came to send me home with the intention of firing me after speaking with the owner.  How <my company> handled it is a whole other story, it was BS and I WAS somewhat compensated.  It's a done issue with <my company> as far as I'm concerned.  I raised a lot of hell about how they handled it. 

 

    There was a whole exchange there, none of it terribly exciting.  The bottom line was me walking to the door, and explaining the whole class was recorded, and none of that happened,  and that I would be finishing the class.  2 of the 3 girls literally just started walking away when I said I had a video of the entire lecture, the spokesman said I was a liar.  At this point a few of the students started coming over, including the guy with the video to defend me.  The spokesman left after exclaiming she would hire a lawyer. (Apparently, she did? I'm honestly not sure because I was told that legal became involved, but I never signed anything or spoke to an attorney of any sort.)

 

  The 3 girls were all friends, and had all referred each other in order to secure a $25 referral bonus at the time of their applications.  

 

Mostly in the moment, I was just mad.  I didn't get scared until reflecting on the fact that if that guy didn't record my lecture, I would have been fired for being a racist.  I might have gone viral, I might have had my life ruined.

 

I don't know what kind of reply I hope for, I just wanted to tell this story.

 

PS: kind of a funny postscript.  The girls didn't even know my name.  Let's say my name is "Randy" and they came into the office saying "Gary is a racist."  "Gary" is my assistant who sent them emails on when class started, what days, etc.  The only thing about this whole thing that made me laugh hard was poor Gary describing his shock and horror as 3 girls burst into out office saying he was a racist, and everyone in the office  turning to look at him.

[Silverburst80]

Maaaan in hindsight i bet you wish you said " You like Mcdonalds huh?, well that's great cause that's where you're gonna end up working...now get the fuck outta my class".

[wasted]

Isn’t it libel or defamation of character? Slander maybe. 

It’s not really racism, it’s ruining your good name and standing. It’s sort of worse than racism. 

Edited August 30, 2018 by wasted

[ZoSoRose]

Wow what miserable people

[wasted]

Does seem strange to pay $700 then not want to take the class seriously...I wonder where they got the money from...

In fact though if you did get fired you could sue for slander and loss of earnings and win big?

probably some loop hole stopping anything awesome happening. 

[DeadSlash]

42 minutes ago, wasted said:

Does seem strange to pay $700 then not want to take the class seriously...I wonder where they got the money from...

In fact though if you did get fired you could sue for slander and loss of earnings and win big?

probably some loop hole stopping anything awesome happening. 

I'm being a little vague because I really don't want it to bite me that I am talking about this, but what we do is free to them.  Let's say I train people to be a hair stylist.  Anyone can pay their $700 and try to get certified, but the industry just doesn't have enough people coming in, so we eat the cost, then place the newly created hair stylists with a proper company who compensates us and that is how we make money off the whole thing.

1 hour ago, Oldest Goat said:

Your experience is so infuriating and outrageous I feel like it just happened to me lol.

You handled it way better than I would have. Glad it worked out mate. That is racism, there's no such thing as reverse racism IMO. Those 3 sound like human garbage.

In real life I can be a really sarcastic, smart ass. So keeping it professional was a real challenge. I'm really glad I did because it was recorded.

They really were bad people.  In 2 months it will be 10 years of me doing this, and I never had anyone close to that kind of behavior. 

[wasted]

3 minutes ago, DeadSlash said:

I'm being a little vague because I really don't want it to bite me that I am talking about this, but what we do is free to them.  Let's say I train people to be a hair stylist.  Anyone can pay their $700 and try to get certified, but the industry just doesn't have enough people coming in, so we eat the cost, then place the newly created hair stylists with a proper company who compensates us and that is how we make money off the whole thing.

In real life I can be a really sarcastic, smart ass. So keeping it professional was a real challenge. I'm really glad I did because it was recorded.

They really were bad people.  In 2 months it will be 10 years of me doing this, and I never had anyone close to that kind of behavior. 

I guess because it’s free they treated it like that. I’d charge a small fee or something. The fact they got $25 for refering each other, this just attracts scamsters. They probably got the $25 dollars and spent it on McDonald’s then thought they’d use the aircon. 

[Len Cnut]

Tell the truth, your response was more like:

'now look here you lil' nappy head bitch, you need to have respect for me i woulda been ya fuckin' Dad if the line weren't so fuckin' long!'

Nah, respect, you handled that with some class, I wouldn't've been able to, this is why I would've never been able to teach, I would've told em where to fuckin' go and no fuckin' mistake, fuck that shit.  I bet you was whistlin' One in a Million that day

Edited August 30, 2018 by Len Cnut