The Benjamin Moore color gallery contains, among others, Clinton Brown and Tucker Chocolate.
My virgin ears! I mean, how racist can you get?!? Or, so says Clinton Tucker, a former Benjamin Moore employee, who filed a complaint in New Jersey state court in which he alleges that these paint names are hella-racist.
According to Courthouse News Service (here), Tucker says that “being a black man named Clinton Tucker, the plaintiff found this to be extremely racially offensive.”
Incidentally, Benjamin Moore also has paint colors called Tucker Orange and Tucker Gray. However, a brief search I conducted yielded no discrimination lawsuit initiated by older or fake-baking employees.
Which brings me to the point of this post, That is, to prevail on a hostile work environment claim, an employee has to show, among other things, that a reasonable person in his shoes would be offended by the same conduct with which the plaintiff takes offense.
And since no one on the face of the earth would find the paint names Tucker Chocolate and Clinton Brown to be racially offensive, then, absent other facts to support a hostile work environment based on race, I think we have a loser claim here.
And an excuse to play Color Me Badd.
*** ducks tomato ***