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A construction company stopped work on a data center being developed for Facebook's parent company, Meta, for three days after a second instance of racist graffiti, an incident that has become a trend in construction sites across the country.
M.A. Mortenson, a Minnesota-based construction firm, halted work at the Eagle Mountain, Utah, site this week after finding a racist, violent message scrawled on a bathroom door, Construction Dive reports. The message included a racial slur.
“Mortenson takes this matter very seriously and we are continuing to work with local authorities to identify the individual(s) responsible and prosecute them to the full extent of the law," the company told Construction Dive in a statement.
The company and Meta have put out a $50K reward with the hopes of incentivizing individuals to come forth with any knowledge they may have of the situation, per Construction Dive. The construction site didn't have cameras in the restroom where the graffiti was written, spokespeople said.
Similar racist defacement was found at another two Meta sites in Ohio, both run by Turner Construction, in August 2020, the Columbus Dispatch reported. Construction stopped briefly in both locations. Last month, anti-Semitic and racist graffiti was found on a Yale University renovation site twice, the Associated Press reported.
Like all industries, there has been a reckoning on racism in construction over the past two years, as leaders attempt to address it through bias training. At least 20 documented racist incidents happened on construction sites across the country in 2020, according to employment law firm Jackson Lewis.
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