No excuses for sexism, racism

“Duh, I just didn’t know our policy about e-mail bias. . . . “

That’s a pretty lame excuse for a state employee to use when caught sending sexist and racist e-mails. When the perpetrator is a state Department of Transportation employee in charge of preventing discrimination, that should be grounds for termination.

According to an Associated Press report, Robert Habern, 55, is the Equal Employment Opportunity officer for the Lima ODOT office. He was reportedly verbally reprimanded a year ago for sending e-mails joking about giving jobs to women with large breasts. This year, he was suspended 10 days without pay for sending “jokes about men kissing, a woman’s private parts and a negative racial caricature of Barack Obama,” according to the AP report.

An ODOT spokesman reportedly called that punishment “pretty harsh.” He indicated this is the equivalent of strike two, and strike three would lead to Habern's being out of work.

I understand public agencies have to follow "progressive disciplinary steps." Even so, if a person’s job is to prevent racism and sexism in agency contracts with vendors and he himself initiates racist and sexist e-mails, he is unfit for the job and should be removed from those responsibilities immediately. If EEO monitoring is an “add-on” responsibility and not his main function, that duty should be reassigned to another employee. If it is his primary responsibility, he should be fired.

Firing would be harsh, yes. So is being discriminated against for racial or sex-based reasons. This employee’s demonstrated lack of understanding of what constitutes discriminatory messaging shows he is not up to monitoring anyone activities. Not even his own.