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ashling

(25,771 posts)
Wed Jun 19, 2013, 09:47 PM Jun 2013

Well, as long as she doesn't "mean" it

Paula Deen On Her Dream ‘Southern Plantation Wedding’


Last month, Food Network chef Paula Deen gave a videotaped deposition as part of a discrimination suit she’s facing in which she discussed her desire to have a “very southern style wedding” for her brother modeled after a restaurant where the “whole entire wait staff was middle-aged black men” clad in white jackets and black bow ties, according to a transcript of the deposition filed in federal court in Georgia. Deen also admitted to having used the N word and discussed the ways the word could be “not said in a mean way.”


Deen, her brother Earl “Bubba” Hiers, her company, and the corporations that operate a pair of restaurants she owns in Savannah, Ga., are being sued by former employee Lisa Jackson. A complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia by Jackson’s attorney, Matthew Billips, last November alleged she was subjected to “violent, sexist, and racist behavior” during five years working for Deen’s various businesses.

According to the complaint, Jackson began working for Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House, a restaurant run by Hiers, in early 2005 and left in August 2010 due to the inappropriate behavior she said she was subjected to in her time there. In the deposition, Deen said she owns half of the corporation that operates Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House. Jackson also said she did some other work for Deen’s company and a restaurant she runs. The complaint alleged “racially discriminatory attitudes pervade” Uncle Bubba’s Oyster House where Jackson claimed African-American employees were required to use separate bathrooms and entrances from white staffers. Jackson also said African-Americans were held to “different, more stringent, standards” than whites at the restaurant and that Hiers regularly made offensive racial remarks. In the complaint, Jackson is described as a “white female.” However the complaint noted she has biracial nieces, so “derogatory remarks regarding African Americans are even more personally offensive to Ms. Jackson than they would be to another white citizen.”


Along with the allegations of racism, Jackson’s complaint accuses Hiers of making inappropriate sexual comments and forcing her to look at pornography with him. The complaint also said Hiers violently shook employees on multiple occasions and came to work in an “almost constant state of intoxication.”
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Well, as long as she doesn't "mean" it (Original Post) ashling Jun 2013 OP
. blkmusclmachine Jun 2013 #1
Wow - just wow. Marie Marie Jun 2013 #2
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