We’ve heard the stories before. A person in a leadership position in the community sends an email which evokes feelings or images of racial stereotyping. Last February it was the Mayor of Los Alamitos, California, who sent an email with images of watermelons on the front lawn of the White House right around Easter time.

You’d think people would learn that by sending emails to a company wide distribution list, or even to an internal department, that it does not make that email protected from being passed to the outside world.

So it has happened again. This time it was a Florida teacher at a middle school in Pensacola who has now found herself the subject of much scrutiny and contempt for a recently released email that she wrote to the assistant principal. The subject line read “I HAVE HAD IT” and in her email she referred to the janitor of her classroom as “the N” and also as “Miss Maid”.

Jennifer Dickens, who is white and age 46, used the racial slur when she complained about the quality of the janitor’s work in her classroom. The janitor is black.

Ms Dickens began her email with the line, “I have had it with the n who is supposed to be cleaning my room!” She continued her complaint by referring to the janitor as “…Miss Maid doesn’t bother to even empty both my trash cans which sometimes contain food.” After some more comments Ms. Dickens signed her letter as, “Grumpily Yours, ~Jennifer”

The Escambia County School District said that Ms. Dickens has been disciplined for the March 12 email but they did not say what form of discipline was applied.

Following the incident, Ms Dickens sent an email to the local newspaper in which she apologized for her “stupid” and “inexcusable” actions. She also wrote that as part of her discipline she “…was required to take a course of study on cultural sensitivity, which has been a real eye-opener for me.” She apologized to friends, family and co-workers.

Unfortunately this is not the last time that racial slurs will be expressed by employees who work for the public. Or for that matter by employees who work for the private sector.

Perhaps email administrators should consider the use of filters for outgoing email. Look for keywords and if found then return the email to the sender explaining why the email was not delivered and noting a violation of company email policy or standards.

Consider the use of a “racial slander filter” as a method of “scrubbing” outgoing email. This would be one way for email administrators to be proactive in ensuring company email policies are met and that a company’s – or in this case a school administration’s – reputation is maintained and protected.