Using the word “blacklist” is not racist, an employment tribunal has found, after an Asian engineer working for IBM alleged the word had been used to attack him.
Taiyyib Azam accused his co-worker of bigotry when they used the word during a team call in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in the United States. However, the tribunal found the use of the word was “entirely innocuous”.
The cyber security expert made various allegations of racism against colleagues in a bid to support “his views that every individual he interacted with was racist”, the tribunal heard.
He also alleged that his managers were using “black magic” and “voodoo” against him.
