"Racism is racism; it doesn't matter which way it goes." That's what Shira Hedgepeth, the white former director of academic technology at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, says about her firing by the HBCU.
The school says she was let go because it was "going in a different direction," but the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission agrees with her claim that that direction was a discriminatory one. From the New York Daily News:
"In my opinion, had I been African-American, they would not have fired me," Shira Hedgepeth, former director of academic technology at Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina, told the Daily News.
"They had no documentation of any problem with my employment. I was highly regarded as a qualified employee."
WSSU has denied Hedgepeth's allegations of racial discrimination, however, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that her race played a factor in her termination, the Winston-Salem Journal reported.
Hedgepeth says she was fired without warning in July 2011 after working at the university since August 2008.
Her superior, the university's Associate Provost and Chief Information Officer, told her that the university was letting her go because it was "going in a different direction," according to an EEOC letter to the university dated Sept. 20.
Read more at New York's Daily News.