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White ex-state worker wins $150K in reverse discrimination case
Mark Pasternak says he lost his state job because he couldn't stand working under a black boss who called him names like "cracker," "polack" and "stupid white boy." After a rare reverse racial discrimination trial in Buffalo's federal court, a jury Tuesday awarded Pasternak $150,000. Jurors found that his former boss discriminated against him racially and created a hostile working environment. (Buffalo News)
August 23, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Right on honky!
Posted by: G-Man | Aug 23, 2007 6:39:15 AM
Good. Racism is disgusting. And it comes in all sorts of stripes.
Posted by: elchampino | Aug 23, 2007 6:39:18 AM
Good for him. I seriously have to wonder how he could be so stupid as to call his employee a racial epithet and think he was going to get away with it.
Posted by: Beyotch Knowles | Aug 23, 2007 6:43:19 AM
"reverse" racism. I love that term. As if racism only happens when white people say/do racist things, and if anyone not white says/does something racist, it's like 'counter-racism' or something.
Posted by: V | Aug 23, 2007 6:43:50 AM
Why is it "reverse" discrimination, why isn't it just "discrimination"?
Posted by: Jinger | Aug 23, 2007 6:45:29 AM
With with you V. Why is it only discrimination if it's done to people of color? I'm quilty of saying that myself and what you said really made me think.
Glad the guy won.
Posted by: cherie | Aug 23, 2007 6:56:38 AM
It's all about connotation. You are all right - logically speaking. But language is shaped by culture, and culture is not always logical.
Posted by: elchampino | Aug 23, 2007 6:59:51 AM
Bah. Whatever.
Posted by: V | Aug 23, 2007 7:02:25 AM
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you guys. I'm just fascinated how words get appropriated by certain interest groups, the meaning of words shift with culture, etc.
Posted by: elchampino | Aug 23, 2007 7:13:07 AM
This is why I often raise my eyebrows when a black person complains of discrimination. Don't get me wrong, I strongly believe in equal rights for ALL people, regardless of gender, age, race or religion. But sometimes black people act as if they are the only people discriminated against. White people get discriminated against too (as this story proves) and I get discriminated against because of my epilepsy and manic depression. But black people would like you to think that it's all about them, that they are the only ones that get the rough end of the stick. That may have been true in the past but not today. Today, everybody (white AND black) get it in the neck.
Posted by: Mark | Aug 23, 2007 7:13:37 AM
I don't think that it was ever true in the past, that only black Americans got "the rough end of the stick." Look at American History, beginning with the treatment of the Indians and the countless Irish and Scottish who were 'encouraged' to move to the Carribean colonies to work in near-slavery conditions. (Some historians allege that more indentured servants died due to abuse or neglect than African slaves.) Fast forward to the treatment of Chinese, Japanese, Arabs, poor white Americans, and Italians. Not to belittle the suffering that southern (and northern) blacks went through, but there's always been institutionalized racism against nearly all groups of American society.
Posted by: CJ Casey | Aug 23, 2007 7:22:00 AM
Where's Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson in this case of racism? Oh, that's right, their definition of racism is one sided.
Posted by: M12 | Aug 23, 2007 7:23:56 AM
Its a white guy, Jesse and Fat Al dont care about that.
Posted by: Jim | Aug 23, 2007 7:25:37 AM
Isn't that what I said?
Posted by: M12 | Aug 23, 2007 7:26:30 AM
We often find ourselves echoing each other at the OS, M12
Posted by: elchampino | Aug 23, 2007 7:37:49 AM
More stupidity on the part of public officials. The manager who made this guy's life miserable should be tossed out on his butt.
Posted by: Phranqlin | Aug 23, 2007 7:59:11 AM
hear hear, Phranq
Posted by: V | Aug 23, 2007 8:03:14 AM
(1) Don't drink and drive. (2) Don't eat at McDonald's, especially when drinking and driving.
Posted by: Sheila | Aug 23, 2007 8:12:30 AM
Oh, sorry, wrong story for the above post.
Posted by: Sheila | Aug 23, 2007 8:12:55 AM
Um, Shieila, poetic, but I think you want the DUI McD's thread...
Posted by: V | Aug 23, 2007 8:13:33 AM
no problem :D
Posted by: V | Aug 23, 2007 8:13:52 AM
Non sequitur!
Posted by: elchampino | Aug 23, 2007 8:14:27 AM
The very term "reverse discrimination" is racist. Still unclear which race coined it. All in all though, a fine tradition. Everyone in their place.
Posted by: debilsadvocado | Aug 23, 2007 8:14:33 AM
goldfish
Posted by: elchampino | Aug 23, 2007 8:14:49 AM
I agree with the comments about 'reverse' discrimination. I'm well aware that blacks get discriminated against, but growing up in flint and saginaw, i never saw much of the all powerful white man they were talking about.
Few things piss me off more than the frequency with which people play the race card.
Just last week I was riding home on BARTlast night with my girlfriend, which is where a lot of my misadventures seem to start. And i see a guy walking toward us. You start to get a feel for bart riders and I look at the guy and his goofy grin as he walks and i'm thinking to myself "This guy is a toucher." I don't make Eye contact, and as he walks by he reaches around me, and puts his palm flat open firmly on my stomach. I grab him by the wrist, throw it off, and don't say anything. I try to not even look at him.
He says "Was that wrong?"
I say "Yeah, that was wrong."
I don't respond to his apologies so the whole thing ends up with him shouting on the bart about how i'm a klan member, and he hopes my family members down south die in hurricanes, and how i'm a nigger. The best response i can come up with is that he should just not fucking touch people he doesn't know. He storms off the bart train yelling something.
You might just write the guy off as a crazy vagrant, and maybe you'd be right to do so, but its not by any stretch, an isolated incidence.
Our upstairs neighbor was jumping up and down while counting one saturday morning, obviously doing some sort of exercise. She's an overweight black lady and our floor sounds like its going to collapse just when she walks, so this was beyond reasonable. Rachel goes up to ask her to not do that, and comes back down saying the neighbor called her a bitch. I go up to talk to her, and ring her doorbell till she answers (as she's decided to put on music and start playing it at full blast) She finally comes to the door, and says she's going to call the cops, because i'm discriminating against her.
Incredulous i asked "Because you're fat?"
"No, because i'm black."
"I don't think thats the case, cause "Black" doesn't make stuff fall off our walls..."
Another time there was a Lady screaming at another lady in the BART parking one morning. I saw the whole thing and the one lady had done nothing wrong. It was just a case of cranky road rage. I suggest that screaming is not the best way to solve it. And pointed out the lady who didn't do anything was trying to apologize like hell. Verdict from the screaming lady? i need to mind my own buisness and stop being so racist. This was a well dressed lady with a job for the Oakland city government. I'm just a tech support monkey in Jeans in a T-shit. She tells me i'm in her face because white people own everything. I was walking to BART, she drove her Lexus.
Yet another time some kids by Telegraph in Oakland threw shit at my girlfriends car, I ask which one of them did it. The group concensus? "Who are you callin a nigger?" I never said it. I can only assume i thought it. Or maybe they're just used to being called that after throwing shit at peoples cars.
So i guess i can only come to one conclusion on that. I'm racist. Its practically a consensus. My main thought is that all these people were just indiscriminately playing the race card in response to someone calling them out on being an asshole. I think this practice probably does more to create actual racist feelings in people than anything I have personally encountered.
Posted by: boynamedsue | Aug 23, 2007 8:15:43 AM
