Plaintiff Had Alleged He Was Called a "Haitian N****"

From an opinion by Judge Steve Jones (N.D. Ga.) in Lenord v. Racetrac, Inc., decided a year ago but just recently posted on Westlaw:

To support his discrimination complaint, Plaintiff referred specifically to a white teammate who, in his words, had called him a “Haitian N****” several times the year before, in 2019. At his deposition, however, Plaintiff admitted that his teammate had called him “Haitian Ninja,” not “Haitian Nigger,” as his email stated. A text message produced during discovery provides some context—after completing a work task, the white teammate texted Plaintiff: “Excellent. Just the way I like it. Flying under the radar. Just call me a Haitian Ninja in training.”

Notably, in an unsent email draft, Plaintiff had originally used the word “Ninja” rather than the elliptical term “N****.” But for some reason he changed the wording in the email sent to Fitzhugh and Campbell. Fitzhugh expressed frustration with Plaintiff’s portrayal of events but confided to HR that “it really might just be a foundational language barrier.” …

Here’s the unsent email draft, as uncovered in discovery (see PDF p. 33 of this filing):

And here’s the email draft he sent (see PDF p. 36):

Plaintiff also made other allegations of workplace harassment:

In February 2019, Plaintiff complained that another Black teammate had used offensive language during a team meeting. In his email to management, Plaintiff alleged that the teammate had “used a racial slur ‘f*** that N****['] towards me. [sic].” At his deposition, Plaintiff clarified that rather than directing profanity at him, as his email had suggested, the teammate instead had described his own impressions after he believed Plaintiff had ignored his phone call. Plaintiff explained:

The phrase was—[the teammate] said he called me. I didn’t answer my phone. This is after I left work and [the teammate] said [at the meeting], “It’s like Fab [Plaintiff] said, ‘Fuck this nigger.’”

In other words, the teammate was not using a slur to describe Plaintiff, but was referring to himself in the third person while recounting an incident.

In any event, Sprayberry investigated the complaint and determined that the allegation was unfounded. According to Sprayberry, the teammate denied making the statement and three others present at the meeting corroborated that account. After speaking with Plaintiff, Sprayberry summarized the conversation in an email, pointing out to him that “there is a prevailing perception amongst your teammates that you look for conflict, that you do not want to work with them and that you want to keep to yourself as much as you can.” Sprayberry concluded his communication by underscoring that Plaintiff must “figure out a way to work better with [his teammates] and that a drastic improvement is needed immediately.”

In October and November 2019, Plaintiff met with HR to again report frustrations with Oliver and his NOC teammates. He complained about several issues, including work assignments, teammates sleeping on the job, the just-described February 2019 incident, and past comments and jokes about his national origin. For instance, according to Plaintiff, before Oliver became NOC manager, he remarked that “Haitians love to work.” He added that teammates occasionally made fun of his Haitian accent, once referred to the catastrophic 2010 earthquake in Haiti, and introduced him to a Dominican vendor for no apparent reason (even though, Plaintiff explained, Haiti and the Dominican Republic have had a violent relationship).

Someone even joked one time about placing a Dominican flag on his desk. By Plaintiff’s admission, however, only the flag comment had occurred after 2016.

HR investigated the allegations, interviewing nine individuals including Plaintiff, Oliver, Fitzhugh, and several other NOC technicians. HR found no evidence that he had been discriminated against….

The court adopted the Magistrate Judge’s Report and Recommendations, which reasoned in relevant part:

Here, Plaintiff has presented only two examples of arguably race-related harassment. He first says that in February 2019, a Black teammate used the word “nigger” when referring to himself in the third person. The teammate did not, to underscore the point, direct the term at Plaintiff. See Yelling, 82 F.4th at 1336 (“[O]verhearing offensive comments is less severe or humiliating than being the intended target of direct harassment.”); Weatherly, 2024 WL 2698023, at *9 (observing that objectionable comments are less severe when made neither to nor about the plaintiff).

Next, he says that in 2019, a White teammate several times referred to him as a “Haitian Ninja.” On its face, that phrase isn’t racist. In Plaintiff’s view, however, “ninja” oftentimes serves as a euphemism for the word “nigger.” The undersigned observes that the context of the remarks runs against his interpretation. But even crediting Plaintiff’s account, these collected incidents—amounting to just a handful of arguably offensive remarks—don’t come close to the requisite level of severity. There is no shortage of decisions demonstrating as much. [Citations omitted. -EV]

As the Magistrate Judge’s Report notes, plaintiff’s lawyer argued that “ninja” was just a sanitized way of saying “nigger,” and depending on the circumstances that might be so. But simply sending an e-mail with “n****” instead of “ninja”—as opposed to an e-mail saying that the word was “ninja” but explaining what one thought was the real meaning—seems less than candid. And the incident is a reminder that if one sees such redactions, one ought to investigate to make sure one knows what the actual unredacted word was (see, e.g., n. 73, PDF pp. 19-20 of Quoting Epithets).

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