Woman fired two days after filing racism complaint

A woman was fired two days after filing a complaint about racial discrimination, The Brisbane Times reports.

Case manager Samantha Cooper was working for the Centre Against Domestic Abuse (CADA) in the Moreton Bay region, north of Brisbane, Australia, helping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families until November last year.

The 25-year-old was allegedly told she was “quite pretty for an Aboriginal”, asked if she had ever met a “real” Aboriginal person, and had been described as going “walkabout”, which is a derogatory term in Australian culture.

Two days after reporting the abuse, she was fired, with CADA blaming the state Government for reallocating funding for her dismissal. However, a Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women spokesman told the Brisbane Times that funding had not been cut to Cooper’s programme.