Brooklyn queens real estate

Jarret Willis, a Black real estate agent at a luxury brokerage in the Hamptons, said his co-workers called him Jafar — a comparison to the brown-skinned, villainous sorcerer from “Aladdin.”

Managers routinely lobbed racial epithets around the office, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in New York State Supreme Court by Harlan Goldberg, who is white and who worked with Mr. Willis at the brokerage.

Mr. Goldberg is suing their former brokerage, Bespoke Real Estate, for wrongful termination, unpaid commission and punitive damages. He claims he was fired in part for his objections to Mr. Willis’s treatment by the co-founders of the company, the brothers Cody and Zachary Vichinsky. His lawsuit follows complaints that Mr. Willis filed in February with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and New York State Division of Human Rights. Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Willis plan to jointly file a separate suit that will focus more on the claims of discrimination, according to their lawyer, Adam Leitman Bailey.

“Bespoke categorically denies the allegations and looks forward to vindicating its position in court,” Marc A. Sittenreich, a lawyer representing the firm, said in a statement.

The allegations come amid national scrutiny of discrimination in the real estate industry where, according to the National Association of Realtors, only 8 percent of agents are Black nationwide.

Bespoke operates in the upper crust of luxury real estate, dealing primarily with properties listed for $10 million or more, with a large presence in Miami, New York City and the Hamptons. Three of the 10 most expensive ZIP codes in the country are in the Hamptons, according to RealtyHop , a real estate data website. The town of Southampton, the location of the Bespoke office, is 83 percent white and 5 percent Black, according to the census.

Mr. Willis, 44, a former model who co-owns a fashion boutique in Bridgehampton called Blue One, joined Bespoke in 2017 as a sales associate. He said he was recruited by the firm for his network of friends and associates. His first deal, the sale of a $32.5 million Bridgehampton estate where he represented the buyer, netted him a commission close to $400,000, he said.

But office life was filled with indignities, Mr. Willis said in an interview. In early 2021, Cody Vichinsky, one of his managers, said that he should order “watermelon and fried chicken” for lunch, adding a racial slur, according to Mr. Willis. Mr. Goldberg said he also heard the comment.

In a text message shared with The Times, one white colleague wished Mr. Willis a happy birthday, followed by a racial slur.

The same co-worker sent Mr. Willis a text message saying that an orange shirt he wore made him “look like an inmate,” and used a racial slur to describe the look.

“It killed me inside,” Mr. Willis said. “But the reason I stayed and swallowed it and dealt with it was because I was always owed money,” adding that he disputed his share of the commission on a number of transactions that he helped close.

In April 2022, Mr. Willis was demoted from his role as vice president of Bespoke Parallel, a division of the company, which he claims was retaliation for contesting how much was owed to him for recent sales, according to the lawsuit.

Payment disputes can be especially vexing for Black real estate agents. White agents in 2021 were paid a net median income of $39,500, while their Black peers were paid just $14,400, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The company fired Mr. Goldberg in September 2022, a month after he said he raised concerns about Mr. Willis’s demotion, as well as issues with outstanding payments on some of his transactions, according to the lawsuit.

Mr. Willis resigned from the company in December 2022. The last insult, he said, was when he discovered that his company-issued email account password had been set to “Jafar24!” He quit a few days later, he said.

“I want an acknowledgment of their behavior,” he said. “I want an apology.”

Susan C. Beachy

Queen Elizabeth II has died. Follow the latest coverage.

LONDON — When Queen Elizabeth II kicks off the Platinum Jubilee , celebrating 70 years on the British throne, next month, she will do so with a slimmed-down royal family behind her: Neither Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, nor Prince Andrew will get a place on the balcony at Buckingham Palace to wave at the crowds.

Even the queen’s presence is not a certainty: The 96-year-old monarch rarely ventures into the public these days, after surviving a bout with the coronavirus and lamenting her trouble walking. But people with ties to the palace said she was intent on appearing on the balcony, the ultimate royal photo opportunity.

For that reason, the question of who appears alongside the monarch is laden with, well, palace intrigue. Officially, the queen’s decision to leave out Harry, her grandson, and Andrew, her disgraced second son, is purely a function of their revised job descriptions: neither are full-time working royals anymore.

Prince Harry gave up that status when he and Meghan moved to Southern California in 2020. Andrew lost the status after the queen exiled him from public life because of his ties to the financier and sex predator, Jeffrey Epstein. In February, he settled a sex abuse lawsuit brought against him in New York.

But the decision to exclude them — particularly Harry and Meghan — was perhaps inevitably interpreted by London’s tabloids as a snub of family members who have generated reams of unflattering headlines over the last two years.

The decision also suggests that Harry has not repaired the breach with his father and brother that opened after he and Meghan declared they wanted to pull back from royal duties, and that deepened after they granted an interview to Oprah Winfrey, in which they accused members of the family of callous and even racist behavior.

The lineup on the balcony will be limited to “members of the royal family who are currently undertaking official public duties on behalf of the queen,” according to a palace spokesman, who did not mention Harry, Meghan, or Andrew by name.

That circle includes her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles, and his wife Camilla; his eldest son, Prince William, and his wife Catherine; the queen’s daughter Princess Anne; her youngest son, Prince Edward, and a handful of others. The queen has also invited assorted grandchildren.

Prince Harry and Meghan are not letting the decision keep them away. In a statement, a spokeswoman for the couple said, “Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are excited and honored to attend The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations this June with their children.”

It would be the first time the couple’s daughter, Lilibet, meets her great-grandmother, for whom she is named. Lilibet was Elizabeth’s childhood nickname. Their daughter’s middle name, Diana, honors Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, who died in a car accident in Paris in 1997.

Harry and Meghan are expected to attend a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral on June 3, as is Andrew. They might also attend other events. But the balcony appearance on June 2 is the symbolic centerpiece of the four-day jubilee festivities, coming just after a military parade that honors the queen’s birthday, known as Trooping the Colour.

Harry and Meghan had tea with the queen at Windsor Castle a week before her birthday in early April. Harry said the meeting had reaffirmed his close relationship with his grandmother. But he ruffled feathers in Britain by telling NBC’s “Today” show, “I’m just making sure she’s protected and got the right people around her.”

The image of a streamlined royal family underscores the influence of Charles, 73, who functions as an unofficial prince regent for the queen these days, carrying out many of her public duties. Charles, royal watchers say, has long pushed to reduce the number of family members with full working status.

Buckingham Palace has begun to share details of the jubilee, which will include a televised party on a circular stage in front of the palace on June 4 and a pageant the next day. The decision to announce the balcony lineup now, a palace official said, had been calculated to prevent it from overshadowing the festivities.

LONDON — Six weeks ago, Prince Andrew agreed to a multi-million-dollar legal settlement with a woman who accused him of raping her when she was a teenager. On Tuesday, he escorted his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, to a memorial service at Westminster Abbey to celebrate the life of her late husband, Prince Philip.

The prince’s very conspicuous public appearance on the queen’s arm, his first since Philip’s funeral last April, sent an unmistakable message of support by a 95-year-old mother for her disgraced son. But it struck some royal watchers as incongruous, given that she stripped Andrew of his military titles and all but banished him from public life after he was engulfed in the sexual abuse lawsuit.

Andrew’s sudden re-emergence came days after a trouble-prone tour of the Caribbean by Prince William and his wife, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, during which the couple confronted a backlash over issues of racial justice and rising sentiment to cast off the queen as head of state in Jamaica and other former colonies.

“It didn’t happen by happenstance,” Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent for the BBC, said of Andrew’s role. “There must have been thinking behind it. You have to come to the conclusion that it was an opportunity for her to actively endorse her son, to point out that he hasn’t been found guilty of anything.”

While Andrew did not acknowledge guilt in the settlement with the woman, Virginia Giuffre, he agreed to pay her, as well as a charity “in support of victims’ rights,” a sum that British tabloids reported to be well in excess of $10 million. He commended Ms. Giuffre for her bravery in coming forward to talk about her treatment by the financier and sexual predator, Jeffrey Epstein, with whom the prince was friendly.

Royal watchers often say the queen is especially fond of Andrew, whose past as a helicopter pilot echoes the military service of her husband.

But after Andrew, 62, failed to persuade a federal judge in Manhattan to dismiss the lawsuit, Buckingham Palace moved to distance itself from him. It announced he would relinquish his military titles and royal charities, as well as the title, “His Royal Highness.” He would defend himself as a private citizen, the palace added, and would “continue not to undertake any public duties.”

At the time, palace officials described this punishment as permanent, saying it had come after extensive deliberations within the family. There would be no avenue for Andrew, who is known as the Duke of York, to rehabilitate himself. It is not known whether Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, or his eldest son, Prince William, the second in line, was involved in planning the ceremony on Tuesday.

“Did Charles and William attempt to intervene and did they fail? Or did they not bother to raise it?” Mr. Hunt said. “I would be amazed if nobody raised it,” he added, referring to the broader palace staff.

Ultimately, of course, the decision was up to the queen, for whom this was a deeply solemn, emotional ceremony. Philip, who died last April at 99 , was buried in an austere funeral at Windsor Castle, under strict Covid restrictions, which limited attendance to 30 people and forced the queen to grieve for her husband of 73 years, masked and alone in a choir stall at St. George’s Chapel.

Tuesday’s service featured a much larger guest list, including the filmmaker David Attenborough, who bonded with Philip over environmental issues. Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, who now live in California, did not attend.

Whether the queen would make the trip from her residence at Windsor was unclear until the last minute. It was the first public occasion she has attended outside one of her residences since last October, when she abruptly canceled several appearances, suffering from what officials said was exhaustion. In February, Elizabeth tested positive for the coronavirus.

The queen appeared frail but resolute at Westminster Abbey, a walking stick in her right hand as Andrew guided her from the Poets’ Yard entrance to the front row. The service was kept to a brisk 45 minutes. Elizabeth looked teary-eyed at one point, but she stood up and down and sang several hymns.