Caleb Ferguson filed a federal lawsuit against his former employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, on March 5, stemming from an incident where an allegedly racist coworker named her knitted monkey after him. He was fired after making noise about the alleged act.
The experience of Ferguson once again throws a spotlight on the experiences of Black healthcare workers, as BLACK ENTERPRISE reported in February. Like more than half of the healthcare workers surveyed by the Commonwealth Fund and African American Research Collaborative, Ferguson experienced a form of racial discrimination while he was employed at the UMPC.
According to Ferguson’s lawsuit, in March 2023, Ferguson was working a shift at UMPC in the transport unit when he saw a coworker, a white woman in her late 50s or early 60s, knitting. He asked her what she was knitting, and she told him she was knitting a monkey. In front of Ferguson and other coworkers, the woman held up the monkey and claimed it was Ferguson, reportedly saying, “Look, it’s Caleb.”
Ferguson, the lawsuit details, was stunned by what happened, but according to Ferguson, she later doubled down.
“I felt very disrespected when my coworker made the comments. I felt even worse when she doubled down on them.”
Ferguson told the Kansas City Star, “This situation could’ve been a trap for a younger black male or even a black male my age who just was at their wit’s end. It’s 2024, and everyone needs to be a little bit more careful about the things they say.”
Ferguson told his supervisor, who the lawsuit says heard the comments from the older woman. Still, to Ferguson’s surprise, the supervisor did not support him despite him telling the supervisor that his coworker’s commentary was “humiliating” and that the term monkey was a “well-known and disgusting racial slur.”
The lawsuit says that Ferguson’s supervisor informed him that he would handle the situation, but nothing was done. Later, Ferguson was told by his supervisor that he “didn’t think she meant anything bad by it.”
A few weeks later, on April 2, Ferguson got into what was described in the lawsuit as a “heated disagreement,” which resulted in him being removed from the premises once his supervisor allegedly escalated it. A day later, he was told he had been placed on suspension, and on April 6, he was informed that he had been fired.
Ferguson, as he told The Kansas City Star, believes that his termination was retaliation for his report of the elderly white employee. Ferguson’s lawsuit is seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
“They used that rule to fire me without a real reason so it wouldn’t look retaliatory, but I reported the incident to HR on a Friday (this was after I reported the incident to my supervisor multiple weeks prior) and was fired the following Monday.”