In California's largest race bias cases, Latino workers are accused of abusing Black colleagues
Nearly every day, the onetime Ontario, California, warehouse employee said, he was stunned to hear racist slurs from Latino co-workers.
"They said it in English — they said it in Spanish all the time," recalled Leon Simmons, a Black father of four with a deep voice and gentle manner. "When they look you right in the eye and call you the N-word to your face, that's dehumanizing."
Thirty-two miles away at a Moreno Valley warehouse, it was the same story. Another Black laborer, Benjamin Watkins, described how a Latina co-worker called to him: "'Hey, monkey! Yeah, you!' and waved a banana in her hand. A group of women burst out laughing."
In America's long history, harassment and discrimination against Black workers has usually involved white perpetrators — and that remains the case today. But with the rapid growth of the Latino population, now at 19% in the U.S. and 39% in California, Latinos form the majority in many low-wage workplaces. And instances of anti-Black bias and colorism among them is drawing new scrutiny, even as activists in the two communities forge alliances over criminal justice and economic development.
Latinos certainly are targets of job discrimination as well and continue to struggle for equity in the workplace. But the two largest racial bias cases brought by the federal government in California in the last decade alleged widespread abuse of hundreds of Black employees at warehouses in the Inland Empire, the state's booming distribution hub for trade between the U.S. and Asia.
In interviews, Black employees said a torrent of racist insults and discriminatory treatment was mainly inflicted by Latino co-workers and supervisors who composed roughly three-quarters of the workforces at the sprawling facilities in Ontario and Moreno Valley.
"Mayate," a type of beetle and Spanish slang for the N-word, was a common taunt, according to interviews and court filings.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuits alleged that supervisors at the global medical supplier Cardinal Health and at Ryder Integrated Logistics, a subsidiary of the trucking giant — along with their staffing firms — routinely ignored harassment in Spanish and English at their
