PBS:
SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — California regulators have sued Tesla Inc. alleging the electric car maker has been discriminating against Black employees who have been likened to monkeys and slaves at the San Francisco Bay Area factory where most of its trendy vehicles are made.
In response to the complaints, the lawsuit alleges Musk has told workers to be “thick-skinned” about racial harassment, contributing to the culture that’s slow to clean up racist graffiti and other hateful symbols scrawled around the factory.
I’ve written about Elon Musk at least once before. My take was that he was an almost complete fraud who still can’t figure out how to land a rocket without it exploding. Perhaps I spoke too soon.
Besides the N-word, other racist language used in the factory include descriptions that likened Black workers to a “porch monkey” and “hood rats” and suggestions that they “go back to Africa,” according to the lawsuit. The complain also alleges the factory was racially segregated, resulting in the area where Black workers labored to be derided as the “slave ship,” or “the plantation.”
Elon referred to this as “based.” He then went on an ALL-CAPS RANT over email with our Daily Rake correspondent Esther Shekelstein, no relation, much of which we simply cannot print here due to hate speech laws. A select transcript is below.
This is just typical porchmonkey whining. My dream for White America is that we get to the point where these hood rats actually have something to whine about, and yet know to shut their unsportsmanlike-American mouths.
Slave ship? That’s ridiculous. I only hire these basketball-Americans due to labour laws, and as a matter of fact I’m ragequitting the entire state of California and moving my factory to China.
– Elon Musk, Tesla Founder
I’m not kidding. After this lawsuit was announced he announced that he was building a new factory, in China. I don’t really care about this either way, I just think it’s funny.
