Portside

The issue is the potential for a powerful individual's racist worldview to manifest itself into discriminatory workplace policies. A black worker threatened to report the restaurant to the EEOC and was told: "You don’t have any civil rights here." That is what we should be talking about, not Deen's contemptible word choice. More broadly, she symbolizes the injustices plaguing the entire restaurant industry. The evidence is mounting. Restaurants are clearly segregated.

Tuesday marked the 75th anniversary of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which ended some of the worst abuses of American workers by establishing the 40-hour work week, restricting child labor, setting a minimum wage and requiring overtime pay for hours worked beyond 40 in a given week. When will home care workers receive these most basic labor protections?