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I’m almost certain that Tonya Battle would have been perfectly fine with not having to look after another newborn on her shift.

What she wasn’t fine with, though, was the racism that went along with that relief.

Last October Battle, a black nurse working in the neonatal intensive care unit at Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., was caring for a white newborn when she was abruptly reassigned from that duty. As it turns out, the baby’s father said he didn’t want a black nurse caring for his child.

What was worse was that the hospital obliged this racist, even placed a sign, in fact, on the assignment chart saying that no blacks were to care for that baby.

I wonder if they would have banned black people from using the water fountain on that floor if the bigoted father refused to use it if they did.

Now Battle is suing her employer – as she should. But during these times, times in which the election of a black president, times in which the fear of being outnumbered by Latinos and times in which right-wing talkers have many whites  believing that being able to discriminate is among the “rights” they are losing, I fear that we haven’t seen the last of this kind of craziness.

In fact, what happened to Battle isn’t unique.

Last March DeWitt Thomas, a white man, refused to allow a black man to bag his groceries at a store in Big Sandy, Texas. According to news reports, he told the bagger, Aaron Menefee, “Wait a minute, don’t touch my groceries. I can’t have someone negroidal touch my food. It’s against my creed.”

Menefee called someone else to sack Thomas’ groceries, but when he returned two days later and made the same request, Menefee’s boss, Keith Langston, who wasn’t in the store when the first incident occurred, didn’t cave into Thomas’ demands – as Hurley Medical Center did for the white father.

Instead, he filed a criminal trespass charge against him.

Thomas, however, had the nerve to file a lawsuit against Langston, claiming that by kicking him out and banning him from the store, he was violating his civil rights; that “white people are to be protected under the same civil rights law as everyone else.”

Boy, does he have it twisted.

Racism and Civil Rights: Don’t Get ‘Em Twisted  was originally published on blackamericaweb.com

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