Blatant racism has seeped into the U.S. Open tennis tournament – and I’m waiting for heads to roll.
Scott Dennison, 56, a vice president for special events at Contemporary Services Corp., — the firm that handles security for the U.S. Open — repeatedly used the N-word and called blacks “scum suckers” and “worthless” in e-mails sent from his company account, according to The New York Post.
“No African Americans please only limited quantities that have brains and can actually do a day’s work,” Dennison wrote on Oct. 1, 2009, in reference to recruiting potential employees for the tournament won Serena Williams this month.
Dennison, of Scottsdale, Ariz., also lampooned President Barack Obama and Rev. Al Sharpton in a July 22, 2010, e-mail regarding a Craigslist posting for security jobs at the U.S. Open.
Dennison offered a mock declaration by a former black employee from Harlem.
“Yu sez brothurz, Mr. Gon allows the black man to be superior we run the place cuz we needs the money and Obama and Rev Sharpton allowed us to mix with the White Crackers at this event,” he wrote. “Come on down we can cheat, steal, eat food and sleep. Just like our new govt allows us to do, to get back at the white man for Slavery.”
Dennison should be fired – today. There is no room in our so-called post-racial society for this kind of racism by people in corporate leadership positions.
The e-mails reported in The New York Post reveal how Dennison feels about African Americans and also shows Dennison’s arrogance: He felt comfortable enough to send his racist rants through e-mail, not caring that e-mails can become public at any time.
Is Dennison racist and stupid?
I doubt if Dennison is alone in his views of black people inside his company. But at least one employee was stunned by the e-mails.
John Storer, 47, a retired US Army major who worked for CSC from 2009 to 2012, told The New York Post that he received some of Dennison’s e-mails and said he was “disgusted” by Dennison’s behavior.
“The first thing I thought was: How stupid do you have to be to put this in writing?” Storer said. “[But] the guy is my boss. What am I going to do?”
Let’s see: Report Dennison to Human Resources? How many other employees at Contemporary Services Corp. received Dennison’s racist e-mails, laughed, and turned a blind eye?
In addition to the US Open — whose flagship stadium is named after the late No. 1 tennis star Arthur Ashe — Dennison heads security for the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am golf tourney and Barrett-Jackson Auction Co. car shows.
These companies should fire Dennison, too. Hit Dennison where it will hurt him most: in his wallet.
In another racist e-mail, Dennison discussed sending a “world renowned” German-shepherd trainer to Boston to replace a security dog that died.
“If he likes what he sees he will fly the Dog to Denver. There he will do a great deal of bite work, off leash training and some n—-r eating exercises,” Dennison wrote on July 14, 2011.
Dennison’s e-mail conjured Bull Connor, the late Commissioner of Public Safety in Birmingham, Alabama who became a national symbol of racism when he ordered dogs to attack a group of men, women and children during a peaceful civil rights protest in 1963.
Meanwhile, USTA spokesman Chris Widmaier said the association would “have to look into” Dennison’s e-mails, adding, “Obviously, this is very distressing.”
It shouldn’t take the USTA very long to make the right decision. And it shouldn’t take a committee to find the facts.
There’s an arrogant racist inside the USTA. Get rid of him.
