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Former NASCAR official Mauricia Grant has filed a $225 million suit against the racing giant, citing multiple instances of racial and sexual harassment. Grant, who is a young African American female, specifies 23 incidents of sexual harassment and 34 incidents of racial and gender discrimination. She says that she documented all of them at the time on an Excel spreadsheet created by her sister.

 

Grant charges that she was the target of repeated and continued harassment, lewd jokes, racial remarks and unwanted sexual advances. Allegedly, two NASCAR officials exposed themselves to her. NASCAR has disciplined the two officials, but denies the charges. NASCAR representatives also contend that Grant willingly participated in most of the exchanges. If true, her complaints suggest that NASCAR lags behind most employers in enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

 

According to the suit, Grant says that some coworkers and supervisors repeatedly referred to her as “Nappy Headed Mo.” When Grant was occasionally late, she was chided by two other officials for operating on “colored people’s time.” She complained to Nationwide Series Director Joe Balash. He allegedly responded that he’d raced cars with these guys for years, that they were “ex-military” and that’s just the way they were. Balash later fired Grant, although he and NASCAR contend that it was not retaliation.

 

Grant never wanted a desk job. She was trained at the Urban League Automotive Training Center in Los Angeles, and picked for a coveted internship at Irwindale Speedway in 2004. In January 2005, Grant accepted her dream job…as a NASCAR official. Within a few months, the honeymoon was over and Grant found herself the target of racial taunts. One supervisor forced Grant to hide on the floorboard of his car when he was driving, so fans wouldn’t see him in the company of a black woman.

 

According to an interview in Sports Illustrated, Grant’s job involved business travel by car with coworkers. One supervisor in particular constantly made references to the KKK and acts of violence during the trips. The remarks made Grant fear for her safety. Other employees quizzed Grant on everything from why her palms were white and if she could be sunburned, to how she did her hair. Grant characterizes such comments and questions as “ignorant.”

 

NASCAR denies all of the allegations and says that Grant was terminated for performance issues, not as retaliation due to complaints of racial harassment.

 

Grant says that she never had problems at Irwindale Speedway, and that she expected better of NASCAR. “When I went to work for this multibillion dollar company, I expected a professional work environment, where the focus was on the cars, the drivers and the competition.”

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