Black employee's racial harassment claim fails.

A black employee's claim of racial harassment under Title VII failed because the alleged harassment was not severe and pervasive, none of the alleged harassers was a supervisor of the plaintiff, and he presented no evidence that the company was negligent in dealing with the racial harassment. (Hrobowski v. Worthington Steel Co., 2004 WL 291973 (C.A.7,2004)).

Several features of the case are worth noting. First, the court found that the complained-of speech (racial epithets, comments) was unwelcome, despite the fact that the plaintiff admitted that he too made racially oriented jokes and used words such as "spic" and "nigger" in the workplace. The plaintiff objected to …