Hennepin Healthcare CEO says she's 'taken action' over blackface photo
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Hennepin Healthcare’s CEO says she has “taken action” against two white employees who allegedly appear in a photo wearing blackface makeup. The image was emailed to leaders of the county health system last month and published this week in the Star Tribune.
The image shows three people, allegedly including a white paramedic as well as a leader of the EMS unit, who’s also white, dressed as the Motown group the Supremes. They’re wearing matching pink sequined dresses and dark makeup. MPR News has not independently confirmed the identities of the people in the photo.
The image is undated, but Hennepin Healthcare CEO Jennifer DeCubellis said in an interview Thursday that she believes it was taken about 10 years ago at a social gathering that was not an official Hennepin Healthcare event.
Asked if the people who allegedly appear in the photo are still employed, DeCubellis said there was little she could disclose.
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“We have taken action with the team members,” DeCubellis said. “We’re not able to discuss the specifics of personnel actions, but we are confident that we’ve taken the action that we need to take.”
On Wednesday, Hennepin County Commissioner Irene Fernando issued a statement calling for the employees to be fired. She said “treating race, ethnicity or culture as a costume is degrading, extremely racist and cannot be tolerated.”
Fernando went on to say that the photos surfaced just after the Star Tribune reported that an HCMC doctor was found still teaching law enforcement about a controversial phenomenon known as “excited delirium” despite being told to end training on it.
Though it’s long been part of police training, excited delirium is not recognized by the American Medical Association and similar professional organizations as a legitimate diagnosis. Critics say it has roots in scientific racism and has long been used to retroactively justify the deaths of Black people in police custody.
Nneka Sederstrom, Hennepin Healthcare’s chief health equity officer, said new policies in place may have helped uncover the blackface incident.
“These photos are probably coming to light as a result of people seeing that we are taking this seriously and trying to make sure that we understand that how deep the culture goes in this institution, and how far we’re going to have to reach to get where we want to be,” Sederstrom said.
She added that the health system began a major racial equity effort in 2020, and is developing an anti-racism policy meant to help employees find ways to speak up when they encounter racist incidents.
