A former Disney contractor has filed a lawsuit alleging rampant racial harassment by employees and executives at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla.
Monica Shaw, who is African-American, claims her supervisors discriminated against her by criticizing her “updo” hairstyle, forbidding her from wearing her preferred heels and giving her a smaller workstation than her Caucasian counterparts, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
Shaw described in the lawsuit how she feuded with an executive who described her shoes as “spiked pumps” and said they didn’t conform with the company’s attire policy, the Sentinel reported.
“My non-black coworkers were never complained of, chastised nor embarrassed for wearing clothing that complied with Disney’s Look Book,” the lawsuit says, referring to Disney’s dress code.
Shaw also claimed in the suit that her white colleagues would ask her if she ate chitterlings, the newspaper reported.
A spokeswoman for Disney told the Sentinel that the company hadn’t been formally served but would respond to the allegations in court.
Shaw worked at Disney world from late 2012 to February 2014, and she received a notice of right to sue on Nov. 7 after reporting a grievance with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, the Sentinel noted.
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