Fourteen months where Marcus Boyd says he endured racist comments, slights, even threats in a hostile workplace run by General Motors.
A workplace where people declared bathrooms were for “whites only,” where black supervisors were denounced as “boy” and ignored by their subordinates, where black employees were called “monkey,” or told to “go back to Africa.”
A workplace where black employees were warned a white colleague’s “daddy” was in the Ku Klux Klan. Where white workers wore shirts with Nazi symbols underneath their coveralls.
In Ohio.
In 2018.
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All those allegations are detailed in a lawsuit filed against GM in which eight workers say managers at the Toledo Powertrain plant did little or nothing to stop racism.
For Boyd, it began on his first day. He said he could feel the glare from white team members as if they were saying, “Who’s he to be in charge of them?”
When he reported the insubordination to upper management, he said he was told to deal with it himself, to counsel his workers who’d used the slur.
The message he said he took from his leaders at the plant: Be happy you’re here. Deal with it.
Source: Inside the GM plant where nooses and ‘whites-only’ signs hung
