Racing official, Mauricia Grant, is filing a lawsuit against the NASCAR organization on grounds of both sexual and racial harassment. The young 32 year old African-American woman began working in her field because she loved the high adrenaline atmosphere, the fast cars, and getting be around some of the top drivers in the world. However, she claims that the enjoyment of her job quickly faded as a result of a hostile work environment.
In the lawsuit, she alleged she was referred to as “Nappy Headed Mo” and “Queen Sheba,” by co-workers, and was often told she worked on “colored people time.” However this appeared to just be the beginning of things as she was also subjected to sexual advances from male co-workers, two of whom had allegedly exposed themselves to her.
According to a recent Sports Illustrated article the lawsuit details a series of alleged incidents:
• Grant was forced to work outside more often than the white male officials because her supervisors believed she couldn’t sunburn because she was black.
• While riding in the backseat of her car pool at Talladega Superspeedway, co-workers told her to duck as they passed race fans. “I don’t want to start a riot when these fans see a black woman in my car,” she claims one official said.
• When packing up a dark garage at Texas Motor Speedway an official told Grant: “Keep smiling and pop your eyes out ’cause we can’t see you.”
• When she ignored advances from co-workers, Grant was accused of being gay. She also claimed co-workers questioned the sexual orientation of two other female officials.
• She was asked by her supervisor “Does your workout include an urban obstacle course with a flat-screen TV on your back?”
Grant says the incident has not diminished her love of the sport, however she demands that things need to change. She claims that after numerous reports of these incidents, Grant was given the same un-assuring response of “these are military guys” or “you need to just deal with it”, somewhat of a “boys will be boys” concept. NASCAR claims they have not reviewed the suit so were not available to comment too much on the incident, but did state that they have a strongly enforced zero tolerance policy on harassment. Well a $225 million dollar lawsuit will no doubt make them tighten up the regulation and enforcement of that policy.
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