‘Swings Through the Trees’: Oklahoma Woman’s Boss Nicknamed Her ‘Ape,’ and ‘Congo.’ Now, the Feds Has Ordered the Company to Pay Her $47,000

A Tulsa printing company must pay $47,500 to settle a racial harassment lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on behalf of a mixed-race female employee who said she resigned after repeatedly being called “Ape” and “Congo” by a manager. According to the consent decree filed on Aug. 13 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma, Judge Sara E. Hill approved the legal settlement between the EEOC and Worldwide Printing, Inc., which does business as ResourceOne in Tulsa. Her order also requires the company to adopt and maintain policies and procedures designed to prevent future discrimination based on race, national origin and genetic information. The case started in August of 2022 when Angela Navarro-Alcorn, who worked as a mail sorter for ResourceOne, showed her supervisor Mor Lee the results of a home DNA kit, which revealed that Navarro-Alcorn “had several lines of ancestry, including a small percentage allegedly from Cameroon, the Congo and Northern Africa,” according to the original complaint, obtained by Atlanta Black Star. Stock image of a Black woman working in an office. (Photo: Pexels/Mizuno K) After seeing the results, Lee “laughed and started calling Navarro-Alcorn ‘ape’ and ‘Congo,’ and persisted in...