The treatment of Black workers may have improved from, say, 50 years ago, but too many Black workers still face a wide array of brutal forms of discrimination and harassment on the job, ranging from racist paraphernalia like nooses and bananas to slurs like “monkey,” “gorilla,” or the N-word. No one should have to endure that. If you facing that at work, get in touch with an experienced New York City race discrimination lawyer to learn about the actions you can take.
M.S. alleged that he was one of those workers who dealt with that sort of toxic racial harassment. M.S. worked as a custodian for the New York City Department of Education for eight years, starting in 2008. For six of those years, the custodian periodically worked with S.M., a handyman for the department.
Allegedly, the handyman always addressed the custodian as “mono,” which is the Spanish word for monkey, and on one occasion, the custodian found a banana peel inside his mop bucket — a peel that the custodian believed the handyman placed in the bucket.