A federal appellate court based in the South has gone back and forth over the expression “boy” as it pertains to African-Americans.

 

In September 2010 the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Alabama, Florida and Georgia, overturned a lower court ruling that said it was racially inappropriate for Thomas Hatley, a white manager at a Tyson chicken processing plant in Gadsden, Alabama, to call adult black men working there “boy.”

 

“The usages were conversational,” “nonracial in context,” and “ambiguous stray remarks” wrote the majority in a 2-to-1 decision that tossed a jury verdict of $1.4 million in an employment discrimination case brought by John Hithon, a black Tyson employee who had worked at the plant for 13 years.

 

The ruling outraged civil rights leaders and a former judge who filed a brief to protest the argument that it was okay to call black men “boy.” As a result of the brief, the court changed its mind last week and issued a new ruling that reinstated a partial award to the plaintiff totaling $365,000. But the court refused to grant the $1 million in punitive damages that the lower court had approved.

 

U. W. Clemon, Alabama’s first black judge, said the second appellate ruling demonstrated the court understood “the unwillingness of black men to go back to being called ‘boy.’”

 

The origins of the case go back to December 1996 when Hithon filed an employment discrimination claim against Tyson, claiming that he had been passed over for a promotion because of his race. In 2002, an Alabama jury ruled in his favor, but Tyson appealed the verdict, and in 2005 the appellate court ordered a retrial. Another jury ruled in Hithon’s favor in 2007, but another appeal led to the controversial 2010 decision.

-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky

 

Rare but Grudging Judicial About-Face in Bias Case (by Adam Liptak, New York Times)

Hithon v. Tyson Foods, Inc. (NAACP Legal Defense Fund)