Two of the largest race discrimination cases investigated by the federal government in the past decade

allege widespread abuse of hundreds of black employees at warehouses in Southern California's inland empire region.

The N-word, the imagery, the nooses.

Wighting on the walls, calling the silver baguillas.

I heard the workers call me Negrafea, the N-word in Spanish, and Aunt Shemima.

I'm Gustavaryano. You're listening to The Times, Essential News, from the L.A. Times.

It's Monday, August 22nd, 2022. Anti-Black bias on the job is sadly nothing new, but as Latino population across the U.S.

and especially California continues to grow, anti-black bias by Latinos in the workplace,

it's drawing renewed scrutiny.

Thank you. into workplace? It's drawing renewed scrutiny. Margot Roosevelt covers California's economic labor and workplace issues for the Los Angeles Times. Margot, welcome back.

Thank you, Gustavo.

In this day and age, people cite white supremacy

as the primary motivator in discrimination.

But what's going on between black and brown warehouse workers

in the inland empire?

About half of the imported goods from Asia

that Americans buy all across the United States come through the ports of

L.A. and Long Beach, and much of them are trucked to warehouses in the Inland Empire. So in Riverside

and San Bernardino counties, you have a huge number of low-wage blue-collar jobs. So the EEOC, that's the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission,

is the federal government's main civil rights agency, and it filed suit against the companies

that ran two huge warehouses after hundreds of complaints from black workers that they were harassed with

the N-words and other slurs by fellow workers and discriminated against by their bosses.

...