L’Oreal Sued. Because You’re Not Worth It?

Sacre bleu! L’Oreal has been found guilty of racial discrimination. The French high court, La Cour de Cassation, slapped the make-up giant with the guilty sticker after it was revealed that L’Oreal and the recruitment agency Adecco planned on using only white women as staff to sell their Garnier Fructis Style hair care line. Evidently, L’Oreal thinks their French clientele is more inclined to buy hair products from a white saleswoman. Anti-racist group SOS Racisme filed the lawsuit after viewing a fax sent out by Adecco advising recruiters to hire women that are “BBR” – “bleu, blanc, rouge”, a term meaning a white French person born to white French parents. This might explain why when 38.7 percent of candidates for the job were minorities, only 4.65 of the total hired were black, Asian, or Arab. The director who sent the fax told the court she only wanted the women to “express themselves correctly in French” when selling the shampoo. So a black or Arab woman fluent in French can’t talk about conditioner ? Lame. The Paris Appeal Court fined L’Oreal and Adecco and ordered them to pay SOS Rasicme damage costs. I guess we’re not all “worth it.” [Times Online]