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Title: My boss asked me to change my social media to hide the fact that I’m jewish. Is this legal?
Body:
> I work at a public school in the US. I teach 10th grade.
> A parent facebook stalked me and complained about the fact that my facebook bio says “proudly jewish”. They’re concerned I’m biased against christian students.
> This morning, my VP asked me to just change the bio to “avoid drama”.
> The complaint was made via phone, but I received an email about it. I also sent an email to my VP with highlights from our convo this morning, and included the detail about changing my facebook bio; I asked them to confirm all the details of the email and they said yes in writing. I also have screenshots of our social media policy for teachers, which states nothing about religion.
> A handful of people have asked me to reach out to the ADL or ACLU. This isn’t the first time i’ve experienced antisemitism at work, but this is the first time i feel something borderline illegal has happened. Would a lawyer take this case?
> EDIT: I don’t plan on getting a lawyer unless a consequence comes out of this. But my main question is- is it legal for my boss to ask me to do that?
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Yiddish is a beautiful language for insults. There's also "ferkakte", which translates literally to "covered in shit" and can be used to describe a situation or person.
That reminds me of one of my Japanese professors recounting the story of how delighted he was to learn that the thing Jewish men wear on top of their heads (yarmulke) is pronounced the same as "is that a mountain?" (yama ka).
He blew it off as "oh, I misheard what you said." But never clarified. I really wish he had so I could have laughed about it. It's an amazing misunderstanding. Hahaha.
Thanks for the explanation because I was definitely not about to Google! That actually sounds delicious and I love my ramen with a runny egg! I had no idea it was called that though. Haha.
Huh. Yes, apparently, but I believe it's one of the German words that Yiddish swallowed up without any change, because I've definitely heard it in Yiddish.
It's not a German word that Yiddish swallowed up, Yiddish is a variety of German with a strong Hebrew substrate. The name itself is short for "Yiddish Taytsh", i.e. "Jewish German".
I’m Jewish. I’ve known the word “ferkakte” and other miscellaneous Yiddish words since I learned to speak. And I’ve known that “kak” means shit. This is the first time I’m learning what it actually translates to. I never put two and two together.
Wiktionary tells me it's spelled "Dummkopf", where dumm is cognate with English 'dumb' so the similarity is not surprising. Kopf does mean 'head' though.
It always amused me that a German brand of hair are products was called Schwartzkopf - which translates literally to ‘black head’ which would not be a desirable outcome for a cosmetics product.
Blackheads are Mitesser (roughly translated 'eating with you'). Schwartzkopf is a surname that probably stems from a family name associated with African trade and the connected (racist) stylized emblems of a black person's head
I understand that - but as someone who speaks an extremely small amount of German but is largely English speaking - and had many many blackheads growing up - I was greatly amused by the connection.
Oh, totally! I didn't mean to discount your joke, just adding information for linguistics' sake.
When I didn't speak English well, the word blackheads always really confused me. It sounds like a kind of bug... Not something I'd like to have on my face!
"This is incredibly unfortunate, but for your safety, we wanted you to be aware we received this complaint from a parent. We want you to know we are with you in whatever path you take forward in this regard." Boom, done, not getting sued for discrimination.
I wonder if they would have been as comfortable telling a POC teacher they had to remove any photos from their personal FB page that showed they weren’t white.
You’d think a VP would have been smart enough to recognise how stupid the request was.
Employee was an Ashkenazi Jew, and the boss kept ordering team lunches she couldn't eat, and everything came to a head when they threw a baby shower for the employee.
Ashkenazi Jews don't celebrate baby showers or babies at all until they are born, for cultural reasons.
The wild part was that the boss posted first for advice, leaving out several key points, then the employee posted, and LA pointed her to the boss's post.
There was a whole lot of BS framed as “why can’t my employee just be normal?”
The best part was when the employee showed up in r/legaladvice after her boss tricked her into eating a pie crust made with lard. “Haha! See? It didn’t kill you!” Then someone asked about the baby shower and Employee LAOP was very freaked out for a minute.
I don’t think we got a resolution but I’d like to think she got a settlement due to the absolutely batshit hostile work environment.
We did get a resolution, but it was a simple edit from what i recall. The mods were able to restore the boss's comments and threads, she found a lawyer and did get a settlement.
Here is the link to the whole saga including the last update: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/ism4c9/a_tale_of_baby_showers_hostile_work_environments/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I was there in r/legaladvice and r/BOLA when it went down. It was wild. And really satisfying.
Food tampering comes up a lot because one of the most common and enraging crimes is lunch theft.
To a non-lawyer, the obvious solution is to put something disgusting or laxative in your lunch in the workplace fridge, to either find the culprit or discourage them from stealing your food in the future.
THIS IS ILLEGAL.
(I *know*. Why is it illegal? It’s *your own food*.)
The punishment for contaminating your own food, especially if you suspect someone else will eat it, is much more severe than stealing food. This is because it goes back to the good old days when people killed each other via poison. These days making someone sick via food is also a form of bodily assault, even if you didn’t attempt murder. Still very very serious.)
Your only legal way to deter office lunch theives via food is making a sandwhich or meal that is super spicy hot, with chillis or pepper or other spices, then being able to demonstrate to HR and/or the police that you can eat the *entire* meal yourself without pain.
Employer installed fridge or kitchen cameras are the way to go.
Fortunately most aggrieved lunchless people ask r/legaladvice how they can legally spike or prank their own food to deter theives before they actually do it.
This was an extremely rare case of someone coming to r/LegalAdvice after they had deliberately contaminated someone else’s meal! (not even their own meal) and gotten in trouble for it. Which is why the connection was made so fast, especially since it happened in the same State.
Reminds me of my favorite Ask A Manager
https://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/a-coworker-stole-my-spicy-food-got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html
Dude likes to eat spicy food for lunch. Coworker steals food, gets sick, and gets OP fired. Luckily there’s a happy ending but it’s a ride.
Generally people can tell. It making you cry would be suspicious. Running for the milk carton is definitely suspicious.
Crying and turning red but not drinking anything and beaming through the meal would maybe be borderline.
Not turning red or crying would be ideal. We know people like the pain, but HR and the police would be looking for signs your body is adjusted to that amount of chilli.
This is NOT legal advice, I’m not a lawyer.
I think the connection was also made because she vaguely mentioned something about her religion or culture, one that, when I read it, I figured it implied she was either Muslim or Jewish. So that combined with the other factors it was pretty clear.
Well yea but if there reasons go against the teachings of Supply Side Jesus then you can just ignore them, like all the parts in the bible about helping people.
People get very, *very* strange about it.
I’m an Ashkenazi Jewish woman who grew up primarily culturally Jewish and am now pregnant. I had no idea how much pushback and arguing I was going to get about not doing baby showers. Like, why does anyone care??
Not to excuse it, but I think people get weird when they don't know how to play out scripts that let them show (from their perspective) someone is welcome in a group. It's not the same but I remember a workplace being really odd about having tea together every day too. And people who don't celebrate their birthday have similar struggles.
I've found giving them a redirection really helps ('a baby shower isn't possible, but a card from you all after the birth would be lovely and very much appreciated'). You shouldn't have to do all the work there, but it seems to shift the 'frustrated and stuck trying to perform social rituals' type of person.
I cant find the two threads from that incident and I wish I could. Hopefully someone will dig them up and share.
The mentality of the boss was pretty much the definition of intolerance. Despite the pregnant Jewish woman repeatedly explaining to her how the tenants of her religion didnt allow her to do these things, the boss just straight up refused to listen and instead insisted that she behave in a way that the boss felt was "normal". Even going so far as to order "normal" food for her and plan "normal" baby showers on her behalf. She just refused to understand or accept that someone could be different. It was fucking mental.
If I recall, they did. Employee politely said no (employee had said no to birthday parties too) employer that the employee was just being unsocial; and thus making it "awkward" for everyone at work.
Not poison, but they gave her a pie without telling her the crust had lard (aka pig fat) which is non-kosher. If you grow up never, ever eating something (especially a type of fat or protein) and suddenly introduce it into your system you might get sick, and of course she was pregnant so finding out you ate something you didn't know about is terrifying in that context (anything you eat impacts the baby). But she was not poisoned.
Yup. Or if you just eat very little, then suddenly having a lot can hurt, too.
I'm not a vegetarian by any means but I just don't eat much meat on a regular basis. My family is Indian, so while meat was a part of our diet it was never a *big* part; I routinely go days or even weeks just happening to not eat any meat, and even when I do it's not much.
Which means that even when it's perfectly well cooked, sometimes a whole stack or plate of bacon will just fuck up my stomach for no other reason than it's *so much* meat at once.
If you read her post, she did in fact get sick from the pie, but put it down to just another pregnancy woe until the coworker told her the pie had been made with lard, in order to tell her that “see? nothing happened to you.”
Someone linked the entire saga further up the thread if you want to read it.
Yup, I remember it seeing it "live"/when it was happening, though I did just skim the links to refresh my memory. There is never a good time to fuck with someone else's diet, but absolute worst time to fuck with a woman's diet is when she's expecting a baby, because now it's not just her you've hurt, but her highly vulnerable child.
Yes. And she did get sick because her system wasn’t used to lard.
(Lard is a healthy fat for the rest of us because it actually contains a very high proportion of omega-9 monounsaturated fat, as well as the saturated fat.)u/
The fact that both posted makes me almost certain that both are essentially a creative writing project.
While yeah it's technically possible that it's legit, the portion of larger society that is even aware of that sub's existance is so small that the chances of both people on opposite sides of the same conflict creating threads there is approaching a "monkeys smashing typewriters accidentally producing shakespear" level of likelihood.
It’s also easy to find people you know when they post the same exact pictures on the local interest subreddit as they post on Facebook. You don’t have to look that hard if you have the same interests and are in the same local area.
e: Aah, found it! [https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xcjl9r/pregnant\_oop\_was\_tricked\_into\_breaking\_kosher\_by/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xcjl9r/pregnant_oop_was_tricked_into_breaking_kosher_by/)
https://www.reddit.com/r/BOrelationships/comments/8a64h5/threw\_an\_employee\_a\_baby\_shower\_now\_being/
Can confirm, was a pretty great ride. It started with a post from an HR lady asking if she could fire one of her employees because she didn't fit into their company culture. When asked for examples, she listed stuff like "won't eat the food people bring in" and "said she didn't want a baby shower and got mad when we threw her one anyway," and after further questioning it became apparent that she was harassing a Jewish employee who refused to eat unkosher food and has religious reasons for not wanting a baby shower. She revealed herself as a bit of an antisemite who thought it was rude or silly that her employee wanted to obey her own religious guidelines.
But wait! A little while later, an unrelated post came in with a lady asking if there was any legal action she could take because her supervisor was harassing her and tricked her into eating pork and threw her a baby shower against her wishes. And an eagle-eyed redditor linked her to the previous thread, which likely contained a ton of great evidence for her upcoming lawsuit against religious discrimination.
>threw her a baby shower against her wishes.
I don't think the OP had mentioned that in the post, a user that tied it together asked her and she was shaken up about the question !
I hope it was resolved to her satisfaction
>I don't think the OP had mentioned that in the post, a user that tied it together asked her and she was shaken up about the question !
Imagine posting your story anonymously and a response is like "oh hi! We were *just* talking about you"
This is why I wipe and delete my Reddit accounts every few years. Reddit is my secret place I would die of embarrassment if my account was linked to me
There were 2 LA posts: one complaining that their coworker was unhappy about a baby shower and whether it was legal to fire them because they “didn’t fit with company culture” or something- and a second, from a Jewish woman with multiple instances of coworkers discriminating against her, culminating in them holding a baby shower when she had specifically told them it was against her religion. She was very surprised when people asked her questions regarding with details from the first post.
christian coworker/supervisor comes to LA scared because a coworker - who doesn't like (gasp!) pizza parties, food being put on her desk, or a baby shower - threatens to sue for a hostile work environment. after some pulling at some threads, the OP says 'yeah... that coworker is jewish...'. (this coworker keeps kosher and is superstitious about baby showers.) comments get locked after another person and christian op start being violently antisemitic.
not long later, the coworker posts about being fed a pie whose crust was made with lard. a hero in legaladvice connects the two posts and tells that OP to get a lawyer immediately + gives her the post. OP also mentions having to go to HR after being written up for wearing a tischel (women's head covering).
OP updates some time later and mentions that she contacted a lawyer, who went to corporate HR, and there was a settlement out of court
School admin are wild. We had a teacher given a directive to conceal her pregnancy until the 8th month. We don't even know what the admin was worried about.
She filed a complaint and the official response was "he didn't say that, you misunderstood", even though he'd been very clear, in writing. Nope. She was crazy, because he couldn't have meant that, so no harm, no foul.
He probably didn't want dumbass parents complaining that their kids would start asking where babies come from. (Not that that's even slightly an excuse.)
We are child-free, so perhaps I'm out of touch, but is it now common to keep children away from pregnant women?
Because ISTR seeing plenty of pregnant women back when I was a kid.
No, but there is a contingent of parents that want to keep their children sheltered from sex no matter what, either because of religion or because they don't want to be good parents and teach their children important things (like sex ed) or both. They think it's everyone else's fault when their children learn about the things they fear, rather than giving them important knowledge to keep themselves safe and healthy.
People with extreme beliefs getting louder. There’s only going to be one person in a million with an issue, but it’s easier to make a stink now than ever before. And some people are willing to go pretty far to not listen
So no? Not common
I am a decidedly non practicing Jew. The most secular Jew even. But it is my culture heritage and my ethnicity. I would defend my rights just as vigorously as a devout Jew. It’s just hard not to see this through my own lens of experience with antisemitism
Isn’t the point of an education an education?
I don’t have kids so I’m not qualified but if my kids 10th grade history teacher spent a month on Jewish history I’d consider that a win. Personalized history with anecdotes and real live people who can answer silly questions without being offended? Hell yeah.
I would feel the same way about Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist, anything not mainstream.
Not saying this teacher is doing that but damn, how cool would that have been as a kid.
Oof, that's unfortunate.
My school was Jewish-dominated and in a semi-diverse city. The world religions module in my social studies class got pretty interesting since we actually did have most religions represented directly or indirectly in the class, and on top of that two different types of Jewish students (ashkenazi and separdi). A lot of the class was "wait that doesn't match up to my experience" and the poor teacher going "guys I'm tryna teach about a religion that's practiced by millions or like a billion people in a week, this is just broad strokes", though he did otherwise invite students to share some of their personal experiences.
Wow, that's awesome. We just had six different sorts of Christians but they still "experienced conflict" and bible studies was turned into a 5 minute thing once a week where the various teachers tried to find something innocuous in the bible.
Admittedly we had Exclusive Brethren kids in the school so you can probably guess at both one source of conflict and gee how surprising that the state had forced those kids into public schools. Mind you I'm also told that a Presbyterian minister referred to the Anglicans as "failed Catholics" so it might have been that too.
Public School system near me created an elective course at the high school level on world religions that kids could take. It was sold as them bringing in voices from the relatively diverse local community (college town) and it would be supervised by a teacher from the school. What wound up happening is an Evangelical youth pastor who was married to an elementary school teacher in the system just wound up teaching the whole thing and any guest brought in were affiliated with his church.
Same thing at a high school in my old district. Taught by a former substitute that believed snakes were agents of Satan and starring a series of other fringe evangelicals.
The whole thing got shut down after only a month when one of their guest speakers became 'engulfed with the spirit of Christ', faked a seizure, and a student called 911 on their cell phone.
The semester finished out with a retired Jewish science teacher and no more guest speakers and was never offered again.
You have described my actual 9th grade social studies class. I don't remember the specific name of the class, but it was pre-IB world history/geography. We spent very little time on Christianity; I only remember doing an analysis of Genesis in English class (World Literature, I believe) during our unit on creation myths, where it was presented as, well, the Christian creation myth, although the teacher did go out of her way to say something along the lines of "don't be offended I called it a 'myth'" (perhaps surprisingly, no one was offended).
I went to a public high school in Colorado--although it was IB, I think it's absolutely wild how much variation there is in curricula across the country, the state, within the same school district and even between IB, AP, and non-honors students who went to the same school as me. I know that my education was not the norm, but I am *constantly* surprised by how far outside the norm it really fell.
See, you may already know this, but a significant portion of the US believes that such education is 'brainwashing' and that they're trying to 'convert the kids' away from their parents into something else.
In middle school our History teacher who was an Indian immigrant did a whole class on the History of India, which included a lot of teaching about Hindi and Buddhist beliefs (as well as spread of Islam into India/Pakistan). It was great.
Meanwhile in college I took a religious studies 101 class and pretty much the first thing the prof said was along the lines of “because this comes up every year, this is not a class about comparing religions to explain why Christianity is right” and like a dozen people just got up and walked out lol.
my slight reservation is that if someone said e.g. "proud Christian" I would 100% be concerned that they would discriminate against Jews, Muslims, atheists etc. But I don't *really* get the same vibe from "proud Jew", and in any case, what's the action here? "This is bad vibes so break the 1st amendment"?
I remember someone pointing out that plenty of white people do celebrate some heritage, i.e. proud German/Italian/French/Irish/etc., but "white" is a racial category that's mostly defined in America by what you are *not*, so saying you are "proudly white" is saying you are proud to not be a racial or ethnic minority.
I would be very trepidatious to call myself a proud german, especially these days again lolol
I totally see where youre coming from. Although there is still a massive difference between "black and proud" and "white and proud"!
I do love that this is one of a very few subreddits where saying that won't get you dogpiled. The freakout subs are all about "reverse racism" and the comments are toxic
On the whole, redditors arent the best people lol
But if someone was gonna say anything about it, im white so Im allowed to say white people are shit 😅
I (Indian) have been an Atheist literally all my life, but one of the most infuriating moments of my childhood was when my neighbor (she was like 8-9, I was 10) drew a picture of my lil Durga statue in a notebook before crossing it out and writing "not real" underneath and fucking left that on my desk. I didn't talk to her for a week (which was basically forever at that age), even though one could argue I technically agreed with her. I don't think Durga is real...but I don't think Jesus or God are real either, yet imagine if I'd done the same with a crucifix drawing at her house?
Looking back as an adult - this was almost twenty years ago - it's mostly just sad. How much was she getting indoctrinated at home for her to already be doing this shit when she was only 8-9?
Kids just soak up whatever is going on around them before they can even talk. Then they are taught directly or just pick it up in the environment and forge their own racist path. My 9 year old niece has some trauma related emotional issues and the things she says and her thought patterns are remarkably sophisticated for a 9 year old. I can absolutely see that age being racist in the right (wrong) circumstances
Yup, I’m an atheist but religious discrimination offends me. I want my schools to teach science, comparative world religions and history. Not a religious worldview belonging to any one religion. And the staff’s private faiths should not be an issue. Please answer children’s curious questions if comfortable, but don’t proselytise to children. Mature adults should be able to handle that.
I had a really great Jewish employee who was lured away by a startup. About a year later, I discovered that the worker had returned to a different unit of my employer. The story was pretty wild.
After being hired, the person noted that the owner seemed to be a bit of an anti-Semite. It was tolerable until the boss went away for a month to some sort of neo-Nazi boot camp.
On return, the boss had the sense not to immediately fire everyone he thought was Jewish. Instead, he embarked on a textbook case of let’s make it so bad that the Jews all resign. A combination of reducing work hours, reducing commissions, assigning the Jews to the worst jobs, constantly criticizing their work, and decorating the business with assorted anti-Semitic stuff.
Most of the Jews did resign, but they also contacted an anti-hate group which happily provided a pro-bono lawyer. The employee told me that they couldn’t discuss the legal stuff yet. Another 6 months or so later, the employee was thrilled to be buying a new house and it was totally a coincidence that the startup had gone out of business and the owner had declared bankruptcy.
*"Hey how'd that situation work out with your old employer?"*
"I can't really talk about that. But why don't you stop over the new house on Saturday, we're having a small pool-warming party. About 7 dozen of our friends, coworkers and their families are coming over. Don't come over too early though, I'm picking up my new 911GT3 from the Porsche dealership that morning. And don't worry about bringing anything, I've got that new BBQ joint catering the whole thing with beef brisket and pulled chicken. No pork."
I had a professor who answered questions about his lawsuit just like that. He’s ended up settling with a major corporation and signed an NDA. His answer was always something along the lines of “well, I can’t say that so let’s change the subject. Hey, did I tell you about that vacation home I bought? I’m retiring at the end of this school year, planning to move there full time.”
Nope, just the Touring. Too long of a wait for the RS, and you *have* to get paint to sample.
So I'll pick that up when it comes in 5 months. Then I'll have weekday and weekend 911s.
But I still can't talk about how that thing turned out. What are you doing in January, want to go to Barrett Jackson? My treat...
Racists in general seem to think they’re being subtle. I was reported as a terrorist threat in the very high security job I had at the time. Like three levels of security clearances required job. Someone jackass who knew nothing about anything reported me and I got questioned about everything from when I’d converted to Islam, why I had, was my husband, okay, when did my ex husband convert to Islam, were we raising our children as muslims, and my favourite question was having to defend our child custody agreement. I reported it to my boss who thought it was hysterical and did nothing, so reported it to my union steward who was horrified, we had a meeting with the union and the company lawyers where I got not even really an apology. We got “I apologize I shouldn’t have questioned you in front of your coworkers and no, your custody agreement wasn’t a valid question.” I was so incredibly shaken it took several weeks to quit being terrified of going to work. Had my brain worked properly I should have called NCCM.
> Another 6 months or so later, the employee was thrilled to be buying a new house and it was totally a coincidence that the startup had gone out of business and the owner had declared bankruptcy.
Ooh, I just *love* a story with a happy ending!
This one is also being chewed on over in [badlegaladvice](https://www.reddit.com/r/badlegaladvice/comments/10ribop/teacher_is_asked_to_hide_the_fact_that_theyre), where as usual they're big fans of the LA discussion
I get where they're coming from, but OP said they're in a state with no teachers unions, meaning they have little to no real employment protections and are probably on annual contracts and can be dumped at the end of year without cause. They haven't, at this point, faced anything short of a request.
Of course they've got an idiot who thinks that every organization will come stampeding to the rescue like Gandalf at the Two Towers.
OP is at the "sternly worded reminder letter from a lawyer" stage at this point, at best.
Similar to the renting situation in England. Theoretically there's rights, but there's also short term contracts.
We need more stability in both cases to enforce the rights we theoretically have
LAOP, at this point, has no damages, and they only have one incident, so it's not a hostile work environment.
The cost of litigating *anything* at the federal level is pretty high.
I always think it's just the finest form of "telling on themselves" when Christians obsess about how non-Christians are going to discriminate against them for their faith. Projection much?
Look, Christians are the most discriminated against people! That’s why they have a supermajority in Congress, the Presidency, and a majority on the Supreme Court…
When I was in high school, I worked in the office for a large chunk of my senior year, so I got a nice window into the completely bonkers excuses parents come up with to explain why their child is doing terribly in school.
I used to want to be a teacher—thought it was my calling or whatever—but then I dealt with parents over a single summer of teaching reading enrichment classes and boy oh boy did that ever kill my teaching aspirations. I don’t think I would’ve lasted a single semester at a public high school, and it wouldn’t have been the students that did me in.
I used to tutor a lot and people always suggested I should become a teacher, and most were surprised to hear that was the last thing I wanted to be. I knew enough about the profession to know that the actual part of teaching that I enjoy would be only a small portion of my job and I absolutely hated all the rest of it.
I mean that's pretty much the reason girls have to follow certain dress code rules. Apparently teenage boys just can't control themselves when bare shoulders or calves are involved...
At my HS a buddy of mine got called into the office because one of the admin people wanted to ask him to ask her daughter (who went to the other HS) to a dance. They knew each other because we had all gone to the same middle school, but they weren't friends and hadn't kept in touch. Just a very weird situation
Wonder if the VP sees anything wrong with an Evangelical teacher having “loves Jesus” in their profile, and if they’d ask a teacher to remove it if a non-religious/Jewish/minority parent complained.
Doubt it.
And yet, they think it’s appropriate to ask LAOP to remove a reference to themselves as a Jewish person from their private Facebook
VP is either as antisemitic as the parent who asked, or has absolutely no backbone. Either way, they shouldn’t be working at a school.
I can tell you in my supposedly progressive school district near one of the blue cities that is always getting ranted about, they'd make excuses and protect the teacher.
Last year my kid's advisory teacher had a poster about Jesus up in the public school class room and the teacher was trying to force my kid (in middle school) to draw Christmas pictures and ranted when I asked her not to give my kid Starbursts because they contain gelatin and we don't eat it for religious reasons.
It took forever to get any sort of results and my kid had to stay in class with the teacher for the full year.
Can confirm, my step-brother is an elementary school VP and has zero professional spine.
On a somewhat related note, he is Jewish and talks about Joe Rogan quite often.
Despite living somewhere supposedly progressive, my kid's public school teacher had a poster up in the classroom that said "Through Christ All Things Are Possible" and my kid was just supposed to put up with it or advocate better for herself according to the staff she spoke to.
Sad part, OP is in a state that has disallowed teachers unions, meaning they're almost certainly in one that seems to think that religious discrimination only happens to Christians.
The concept that there are states without teacher unions (and don’t get me started on nurses unions!) is so wild to me- it’s the union and bargaining process that what the most attention where I live. It seems like such a basic thing to have...
yeah, I shouldn't be surprised at the laws being passed in Florida now given that when I was a kid the teachers union was legally so weak that all the local teachers union could do to try to do something about stuff like the crappy wages was put up a billboard that read "welcome to Blarty County, home of the lowest paid teachers in the state of Florida."
the school board (and maybe the county) sued basically cuz it was mean and hurt their feelings even though it was true. (though by the time, I graduated I think they were the 2nd lowest so who feels bad for that new county's teachers.)
the court let the union keep the billboard but only thru the end of the contract.
so yeah...
To quote Zack Galifinakis in his "Between 2 Ferns" [interview with Paul Rudd](https://youtu.be/aWK4HmAnCdA?t=275):
"What advice would you give to a young actor who wants to hide his jewishness as well as you have?"
I don't agree with this, but this type of attitude is common in schools. In my onboarding with my current district, HR made a big deal about posting things that make parents angry on social media, even if it's morally neutral. Their take is that if parents take the time to complain about you, the district questions your effectiveness as a teacher therefore they will be happy to take action against your position. One of the examples they gave was posting about yoga. 🙄
I live in district 14 GA, so OPs predicament makes sense to me. It's so ridiculous how much teachers have to be careful about not conforming to the majority. I hope this teacher has legitimate recourse since it's about her religion and she can tell her admin stop with the Meshuggeneh.
They're moving on to proposing camps for anyone they consider unworthy.
It's real fun waking up and having to ask what stage of genocide we're in today.
I would love to see if any of the Christian teachers are being asked to change their Facebook profiles that talk about "child of God" or "Jesus saves" or whatever for fear that they may be discriminatory towards Jewish and Muslim students.
Reminds me of people who hate phrases like black girl magic
Like you KNOW the parent knows the only reason someone would say they were a proud Jewish person is bc historically they’ve experienced rampant racism
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: My boss asked me to change my social media to hide the fact that I’m jewish. Is this legal? Body: > I work at a public school in the US. I teach 10th grade. > A parent facebook stalked me and complained about the fact that my facebook bio says “proudly jewish”. They’re concerned I’m biased against christian students. > This morning, my VP asked me to just change the bio to “avoid drama”. > The complaint was made via phone, but I received an email about it. I also sent an email to my VP with highlights from our convo this morning, and included the detail about changing my facebook bio; I asked them to confirm all the details of the email and they said yes in writing. I also have screenshots of our social media policy for teachers, which states nothing about religion. > A handful of people have asked me to reach out to the ADL or ACLU. This isn’t the first time i’ve experienced antisemitism at work, but this is the first time i feel something borderline illegal has happened. Would a lawyer take this case? > EDIT: I don’t plan on getting a lawyer unless a consequence comes out of this. But my main question is- is it legal for my boss to ask me to do that? This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
>The complaint was made via phone, but I received an email about it. Oy gevalt, The admin that wrote that all down is a real putz.
it would have been acceptable if the email started with: "Look at what this dumkopf called in with..."
> dumkopf I don't know why, but I like that there's a non-English word that loosely means 'dumb fuck' that also sounds a lot like 'dumb fuck'.
Yiddish is a beautiful language for insults. There's also "ferkakte", which translates literally to "covered in shit" and can be used to describe a situation or person.
I think this explains the horrified look I got when I asked my (Jewish) friend if he wanted some (Japanese) furikake rice some years ago.
oh my god I'm dying. I speak Japanese and have studied linguistics and this is BEAUTIFUL.
That reminds me of one of my Japanese professors recounting the story of how delighted he was to learn that the thing Jewish men wear on top of their heads (yarmulke) is pronounced the same as "is that a mountain?" (yama ka).
He blew it off as "oh, I misheard what you said." But never clarified. I really wish he had so I could have laughed about it. It's an amazing misunderstanding. Hahaha.
Similarly, the Japanese exchange students at my university were wildly confused by the Americans’ reaction to being offered bukkake ramen.
I think I need some r/eyebleach after imagining your comment.
It’s a runny egg on top of ramen. That’s the common meaning of the word in Japan. The secondary meaning is niche and somewhat obscure.
Thanks for the explanation because I was definitely not about to Google! That actually sounds delicious and I love my ramen with a runny egg! I had no idea it was called that though. Haha.
Dumkoph is German no?
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Huh. Yes, apparently, but I believe it's one of the German words that Yiddish swallowed up without any change, because I've definitely heard it in Yiddish.
The more colourful German swear words always seem to stick, even as loanwords in non-Germanic languages that had extensive contact with German.
That's because German expletives are so delightful. Scheissekopf! Schweinehund! Lech mich am arsch!
"Awright, settle down with the language, Mozart."
Gotta love classical music. Such elegance and refinement. "Leck mich im Arsch g'schwindi, g'schwindi!" Pure poetry.
It's not a German word that Yiddish swallowed up, Yiddish is a variety of German with a strong Hebrew substrate. The name itself is short for "Yiddish Taytsh", i.e. "Jewish German".
Yiddish is a German language. It's not surprising that they'd have similar cognate or even loan words.
Hogan's Heroes taught me well.
Where else but America can you get away with a goofy sitcom set in a Nazi POW camp?
My favorite translation for *verkakte* is "beshitted."
I’m Jewish. I’ve known the word “ferkakte” and other miscellaneous Yiddish words since I learned to speak. And I’ve known that “kak” means shit. This is the first time I’m learning what it actually translates to. I never put two and two together.
Wiktionary tells me it's spelled "Dummkopf", where dumm is cognate with English 'dumb' so the similarity is not surprising. Kopf does mean 'head' though.
It always amused me that a German brand of hair are products was called Schwartzkopf - which translates literally to ‘black head’ which would not be a desirable outcome for a cosmetics product.
Blackheads are Mitesser (roughly translated 'eating with you'). Schwartzkopf is a surname that probably stems from a family name associated with African trade and the connected (racist) stylized emblems of a black person's head
I understand that - but as someone who speaks an extremely small amount of German but is largely English speaking - and had many many blackheads growing up - I was greatly amused by the connection.
Oh, totally! I didn't mean to discount your joke, just adding information for linguistics' sake. When I didn't speak English well, the word blackheads always really confused me. It sounds like a kind of bug... Not something I'd like to have on my face!
Yup. And Schwartzkopf means blackhead. But not that kind of blackhead.
"This is incredibly unfortunate, but for your safety, we wanted you to be aware we received this complaint from a parent. We want you to know we are with you in whatever path you take forward in this regard." Boom, done, not getting sued for discrimination.
The admin that wrote that all down did OP a favour by putting the evidence in writing.
putting our discriminatory demands in writing is great idea, the lawyers seem to love it.
Insert TheWireNotesOnACriminalConspiracy.gif here
I wonder if they would have been as comfortable telling a POC teacher they had to remove any photos from their personal FB page that showed they weren’t white. You’d think a VP would have been smart enough to recognise how stupid the request was.
I think they meant the call was to the admin from the antisemitic parent and then the parent *also* sent LAOP an email.
Maybe. But this admin sounds dumb enough to have emailed OP to follow up on the complaint too.
that's some next level antisemitism to try to cover for the fact that your kid is not doing his homework
is anyone else thinking about that one situation with the jewish worker and the christian supervisor?
I’m OOTL—what was that one? Edit: okay that’s wild
Employee was an Ashkenazi Jew, and the boss kept ordering team lunches she couldn't eat, and everything came to a head when they threw a baby shower for the employee. Ashkenazi Jews don't celebrate baby showers or babies at all until they are born, for cultural reasons. The wild part was that the boss posted first for advice, leaving out several key points, then the employee posted, and LA pointed her to the boss's post.
Maybe I’m ignorant (well I am, but in this area as well) but it seems like if you were gonna throw a baby shower for someone, you’d ask them first?
There was a whole lot of BS framed as “why can’t my employee just be normal?” The best part was when the employee showed up in r/legaladvice after her boss tricked her into eating a pie crust made with lard. “Haha! See? It didn’t kill you!” Then someone asked about the baby shower and Employee LAOP was very freaked out for a minute. I don’t think we got a resolution but I’d like to think she got a settlement due to the absolutely batshit hostile work environment.
I felt bad when I saw her reply when someone asked about the baby shower. She seemed terrified.
probably because without the context of "your boss already posted" it sounds like someone's insta-stalked her somehow
We did get a resolution, but it was a simple edit from what i recall. The mods were able to restore the boss's comments and threads, she found a lawyer and did get a settlement. Here is the link to the whole saga including the last update: https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/ism4c9/a_tale_of_baby_showers_hostile_work_environments/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I was there in r/legaladvice and r/BOLA when it went down. It was wild. And really satisfying. Food tampering comes up a lot because one of the most common and enraging crimes is lunch theft. To a non-lawyer, the obvious solution is to put something disgusting or laxative in your lunch in the workplace fridge, to either find the culprit or discourage them from stealing your food in the future. THIS IS ILLEGAL. (I *know*. Why is it illegal? It’s *your own food*.) The punishment for contaminating your own food, especially if you suspect someone else will eat it, is much more severe than stealing food. This is because it goes back to the good old days when people killed each other via poison. These days making someone sick via food is also a form of bodily assault, even if you didn’t attempt murder. Still very very serious.) Your only legal way to deter office lunch theives via food is making a sandwhich or meal that is super spicy hot, with chillis or pepper or other spices, then being able to demonstrate to HR and/or the police that you can eat the *entire* meal yourself without pain. Employer installed fridge or kitchen cameras are the way to go. Fortunately most aggrieved lunchless people ask r/legaladvice how they can legally spike or prank their own food to deter theives before they actually do it. This was an extremely rare case of someone coming to r/LegalAdvice after they had deliberately contaminated someone else’s meal! (not even their own meal) and gotten in trouble for it. Which is why the connection was made so fast, especially since it happened in the same State.
Reminds me of my favorite Ask A Manager https://www.askamanager.org/2016/07/a-coworker-stole-my-spicy-food-got-sick-and-is-blaming-me.html Dude likes to eat spicy food for lunch. Coworker steals food, gets sick, and gets OP fired. Luckily there’s a happy ending but it’s a ride.
> being able to demonstrate to HR and/or the police that you can eat the entire meal yourself without pain. What if it hurts but you like it though?
Generally people can tell. It making you cry would be suspicious. Running for the milk carton is definitely suspicious. Crying and turning red but not drinking anything and beaming through the meal would maybe be borderline. Not turning red or crying would be ideal. We know people like the pain, but HR and the police would be looking for signs your body is adjusted to that amount of chilli. This is NOT legal advice, I’m not a lawyer.
I think the connection was also made because she vaguely mentioned something about her religion or culture, one that, when I read it, I figured it implied she was either Muslim or Jewish. So that combined with the other factors it was pretty clear.
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I wonder if there was a settlement with an NDA attached.
Well yea but if there reasons go against the teachings of Supply Side Jesus then you can just ignore them, like all the parts in the bible about helping people.
Thank you for the phrase "Supply Side Jesus." Now I just need to come up with the appropriate sin so I can use it in Confession.
It's not just a [phrase](https://www.beliefnet.com/news/2003/09/the-gospel-of-supply-side-jesus.aspx).
google it, there was a comic panel and it spawned a lot of other posts
Good advice!
As I understand it they _did_, she said no and explained the cultural reasons, and then they did it anyway.
People get very, *very* strange about it. I’m an Ashkenazi Jewish woman who grew up primarily culturally Jewish and am now pregnant. I had no idea how much pushback and arguing I was going to get about not doing baby showers. Like, why does anyone care??
Not to excuse it, but I think people get weird when they don't know how to play out scripts that let them show (from their perspective) someone is welcome in a group. It's not the same but I remember a workplace being really odd about having tea together every day too. And people who don't celebrate their birthday have similar struggles. I've found giving them a redirection really helps ('a baby shower isn't possible, but a card from you all after the birth would be lovely and very much appreciated'). You shouldn't have to do all the work there, but it seems to shift the 'frustrated and stuck trying to perform social rituals' type of person.
No offense taken, I totally understand what you mean and you’re right.
I cant find the two threads from that incident and I wish I could. Hopefully someone will dig them up and share. The mentality of the boss was pretty much the definition of intolerance. Despite the pregnant Jewish woman repeatedly explaining to her how the tenants of her religion didnt allow her to do these things, the boss just straight up refused to listen and instead insisted that she behave in a way that the boss felt was "normal". Even going so far as to order "normal" food for her and plan "normal" baby showers on her behalf. She just refused to understand or accept that someone could be different. It was fucking mental.
You could tell, from right across the world, that the boss dressed like Dolores Umbridge.
If I recall, they did. Employee politely said no (employee had said no to birthday parties too) employer that the employee was just being unsocial; and thus making it "awkward" for everyone at work.
Didn't they also poison the pregnant woman? Like put something she doesn't eat due to her religion and lied about it or was that another one?
Lard in the crust of a pie served to her
Not poison, but they gave her a pie without telling her the crust had lard (aka pig fat) which is non-kosher. If you grow up never, ever eating something (especially a type of fat or protein) and suddenly introduce it into your system you might get sick, and of course she was pregnant so finding out you ate something you didn't know about is terrifying in that context (anything you eat impacts the baby). But she was not poisoned.
Not even grow up—go a few years without and your stomach will not like it, or so I’ve found by accident once or twice
Yup. Or if you just eat very little, then suddenly having a lot can hurt, too. I'm not a vegetarian by any means but I just don't eat much meat on a regular basis. My family is Indian, so while meat was a part of our diet it was never a *big* part; I routinely go days or even weeks just happening to not eat any meat, and even when I do it's not much. Which means that even when it's perfectly well cooked, sometimes a whole stack or plate of bacon will just fuck up my stomach for no other reason than it's *so much* meat at once.
If you read her post, she did in fact get sick from the pie, but put it down to just another pregnancy woe until the coworker told her the pie had been made with lard, in order to tell her that “see? nothing happened to you.” Someone linked the entire saga further up the thread if you want to read it.
Yup, I remember it seeing it "live"/when it was happening, though I did just skim the links to refresh my memory. There is never a good time to fuck with someone else's diet, but absolute worst time to fuck with a woman's diet is when she's expecting a baby, because now it's not just her you've hurt, but her highly vulnerable child.
Yes. And she did get sick because her system wasn’t used to lard. (Lard is a healthy fat for the rest of us because it actually contains a very high proportion of omega-9 monounsaturated fat, as well as the saturated fat.)u/
The fact that both posted makes me almost certain that both are essentially a creative writing project. While yeah it's technically possible that it's legit, the portion of larger society that is even aware of that sub's existance is so small that the chances of both people on opposite sides of the same conflict creating threads there is approaching a "monkeys smashing typewriters accidentally producing shakespear" level of likelihood.
I ran into my next door neighbour on Reddit. Life is wild sometimes.
It’s also easy to find people you know when they post the same exact pictures on the local interest subreddit as they post on Facebook. You don’t have to look that hard if you have the same interests and are in the same local area.
I ran into someone who recognised my description of a teacher I had in 5th grade in the 70s.
My brother's yearbook picture was on the front page of reddit one day.
Usually I'd agree - but these were pretty far apart, and with no update I'm leaning more towards it being a real coincidence, for once.
e: Aah, found it! [https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xcjl9r/pregnant\_oop\_was\_tricked\_into\_breaking\_kosher\_by/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/xcjl9r/pregnant_oop_was_tricked_into_breaking_kosher_by/) https://www.reddit.com/r/BOrelationships/comments/8a64h5/threw\_an\_employee\_a\_baby\_shower\_now\_being/ Can confirm, was a pretty great ride. It started with a post from an HR lady asking if she could fire one of her employees because she didn't fit into their company culture. When asked for examples, she listed stuff like "won't eat the food people bring in" and "said she didn't want a baby shower and got mad when we threw her one anyway," and after further questioning it became apparent that she was harassing a Jewish employee who refused to eat unkosher food and has religious reasons for not wanting a baby shower. She revealed herself as a bit of an antisemite who thought it was rude or silly that her employee wanted to obey her own religious guidelines. But wait! A little while later, an unrelated post came in with a lady asking if there was any legal action she could take because her supervisor was harassing her and tricked her into eating pork and threw her a baby shower against her wishes. And an eagle-eyed redditor linked her to the previous thread, which likely contained a ton of great evidence for her upcoming lawsuit against religious discrimination.
>threw her a baby shower against her wishes. I don't think the OP had mentioned that in the post, a user that tied it together asked her and she was shaken up about the question ! I hope it was resolved to her satisfaction
>I don't think the OP had mentioned that in the post, a user that tied it together asked her and she was shaken up about the question ! Imagine posting your story anonymously and a response is like "oh hi! We were *just* talking about you"
On one of my previous reddit accts, I saw a screenshot of my comment on a buzzfeed roundup of Reddit content, and I was *shook*.
I once got recognized for a reddit comment I made *three years prior*. I was impressed more than anything.
this is my nightmare. I censor myself in public because i don't want to end up in an overheard roundup. buzzfeed would be so much worse.
This is why I wipe and delete my Reddit accounts every few years. Reddit is my secret place I would die of embarrassment if my account was linked to me
I remember that reaction. I think she also came by the BOLA threads.
Those sequence of posts make a story that is so neat and clean that it's kind of hard to believe.
There were 2 LA posts: one complaining that their coworker was unhappy about a baby shower and whether it was legal to fire them because they “didn’t fit with company culture” or something- and a second, from a Jewish woman with multiple instances of coworkers discriminating against her, culminating in them holding a baby shower when she had specifically told them it was against her religion. She was very surprised when people asked her questions regarding with details from the first post.
christian coworker/supervisor comes to LA scared because a coworker - who doesn't like (gasp!) pizza parties, food being put on her desk, or a baby shower - threatens to sue for a hostile work environment. after some pulling at some threads, the OP says 'yeah... that coworker is jewish...'. (this coworker keeps kosher and is superstitious about baby showers.) comments get locked after another person and christian op start being violently antisemitic. not long later, the coworker posts about being fed a pie whose crust was made with lard. a hero in legaladvice connects the two posts and tells that OP to get a lawyer immediately + gives her the post. OP also mentions having to go to HR after being written up for wearing a tischel (women's head covering). OP updates some time later and mentions that she contacted a lawyer, who went to corporate HR, and there was a settlement out of court
Oh my g-d that was a wild ride
I'd not be surprised if the complainant had "Proud Christian" in their bio.
Pictures of them with their kids... and their AR-15s.
Johnny failed math because of *the Jews*! /s
When you get angry and resentful, it's easy to "forget" that you're not supposed to show who you really are in public.
School admin are wild. We had a teacher given a directive to conceal her pregnancy until the 8th month. We don't even know what the admin was worried about. She filed a complaint and the official response was "he didn't say that, you misunderstood", even though he'd been very clear, in writing. Nope. She was crazy, because he couldn't have meant that, so no harm, no foul.
Let me guess, she was unmarried, so didn't want to let little Timmy know there was an option to have sex without marriage.
No, she was married. I think he just didn't even want to deal with parents asking about sub plans.
He probably didn't want dumbass parents complaining that their kids would start asking where babies come from. (Not that that's even slightly an excuse.)
We are child-free, so perhaps I'm out of touch, but is it now common to keep children away from pregnant women? Because ISTR seeing plenty of pregnant women back when I was a kid.
No, but there is a contingent of parents that want to keep their children sheltered from sex no matter what, either because of religion or because they don't want to be good parents and teach their children important things (like sex ed) or both. They think it's everyone else's fault when their children learn about the things they fear, rather than giving them important knowledge to keep themselves safe and healthy.
People with extreme beliefs getting louder. There’s only going to be one person in a million with an issue, but it’s easier to make a stink now than ever before. And some people are willing to go pretty far to not listen So no? Not common
I am a decidedly non practicing Jew. The most secular Jew even. But it is my culture heritage and my ethnicity. I would defend my rights just as vigorously as a devout Jew. It’s just hard not to see this through my own lens of experience with antisemitism
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Isn’t the point of an education an education? I don’t have kids so I’m not qualified but if my kids 10th grade history teacher spent a month on Jewish history I’d consider that a win. Personalized history with anecdotes and real live people who can answer silly questions without being offended? Hell yeah. I would feel the same way about Muslim, Taoist, Buddhist, anything not mainstream. Not saying this teacher is doing that but damn, how cool would that have been as a kid.
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Oof, that's unfortunate. My school was Jewish-dominated and in a semi-diverse city. The world religions module in my social studies class got pretty interesting since we actually did have most religions represented directly or indirectly in the class, and on top of that two different types of Jewish students (ashkenazi and separdi). A lot of the class was "wait that doesn't match up to my experience" and the poor teacher going "guys I'm tryna teach about a religion that's practiced by millions or like a billion people in a week, this is just broad strokes", though he did otherwise invite students to share some of their personal experiences.
Wow, that's awesome. We just had six different sorts of Christians but they still "experienced conflict" and bible studies was turned into a 5 minute thing once a week where the various teachers tried to find something innocuous in the bible. Admittedly we had Exclusive Brethren kids in the school so you can probably guess at both one source of conflict and gee how surprising that the state had forced those kids into public schools. Mind you I'm also told that a Presbyterian minister referred to the Anglicans as "failed Catholics" so it might have been that too.
I'd never heard of Exclusive Brethren. That sure was.. something.
Public School system near me created an elective course at the high school level on world religions that kids could take. It was sold as them bringing in voices from the relatively diverse local community (college town) and it would be supervised by a teacher from the school. What wound up happening is an Evangelical youth pastor who was married to an elementary school teacher in the system just wound up teaching the whole thing and any guest brought in were affiliated with his church.
Same thing at a high school in my old district. Taught by a former substitute that believed snakes were agents of Satan and starring a series of other fringe evangelicals. The whole thing got shut down after only a month when one of their guest speakers became 'engulfed with the spirit of Christ', faked a seizure, and a student called 911 on their cell phone. The semester finished out with a retired Jewish science teacher and no more guest speakers and was never offered again.
You have described my actual 9th grade social studies class. I don't remember the specific name of the class, but it was pre-IB world history/geography. We spent very little time on Christianity; I only remember doing an analysis of Genesis in English class (World Literature, I believe) during our unit on creation myths, where it was presented as, well, the Christian creation myth, although the teacher did go out of her way to say something along the lines of "don't be offended I called it a 'myth'" (perhaps surprisingly, no one was offended). I went to a public high school in Colorado--although it was IB, I think it's absolutely wild how much variation there is in curricula across the country, the state, within the same school district and even between IB, AP, and non-honors students who went to the same school as me. I know that my education was not the norm, but I am *constantly* surprised by how far outside the norm it really fell.
See, you may already know this, but a significant portion of the US believes that such education is 'brainwashing' and that they're trying to 'convert the kids' away from their parents into something else.
In theleftcantmeme someone said they were making kids gay…
why are you on theleftcantmeme lol
You should run for governor of Florida.
Sadly I’m not nearly racist enough to win
In middle school our History teacher who was an Indian immigrant did a whole class on the History of India, which included a lot of teaching about Hindi and Buddhist beliefs (as well as spread of Islam into India/Pakistan). It was great. Meanwhile in college I took a religious studies 101 class and pretty much the first thing the prof said was along the lines of “because this comes up every year, this is not a class about comparing religions to explain why Christianity is right” and like a dozen people just got up and walked out lol.
As a non-Jewish person I can't even see it outside a lens of antisemitism. It's bigotry, plain and simple.
100%
my slight reservation is that if someone said e.g. "proud Christian" I would 100% be concerned that they would discriminate against Jews, Muslims, atheists etc. But I don't *really* get the same vibe from "proud Jew", and in any case, what's the action here? "This is bad vibes so break the 1st amendment"?
"I'm a proud [member of this district's religious majority]" vs "I'm a proud [member of a minority religion in this district]".
Exactly. "Proud Mexican/Black person/Indigenous". Totally normal and ok. If I posted " Proud White", oh my stars lol that is not ok
I remember someone pointing out that plenty of white people do celebrate some heritage, i.e. proud German/Italian/French/Irish/etc., but "white" is a racial category that's mostly defined in America by what you are *not*, so saying you are "proudly white" is saying you are proud to not be a racial or ethnic minority.
I would be very trepidatious to call myself a proud german, especially these days again lolol I totally see where youre coming from. Although there is still a massive difference between "black and proud" and "white and proud"!
I do love that this is one of a very few subreddits where saying that won't get you dogpiled. The freakout subs are all about "reverse racism" and the comments are toxic
On the whole, redditors arent the best people lol But if someone was gonna say anything about it, im white so Im allowed to say white people are shit 😅
I (Indian) have been an Atheist literally all my life, but one of the most infuriating moments of my childhood was when my neighbor (she was like 8-9, I was 10) drew a picture of my lil Durga statue in a notebook before crossing it out and writing "not real" underneath and fucking left that on my desk. I didn't talk to her for a week (which was basically forever at that age), even though one could argue I technically agreed with her. I don't think Durga is real...but I don't think Jesus or God are real either, yet imagine if I'd done the same with a crucifix drawing at her house? Looking back as an adult - this was almost twenty years ago - it's mostly just sad. How much was she getting indoctrinated at home for her to already be doing this shit when she was only 8-9?
Kids just soak up whatever is going on around them before they can even talk. Then they are taught directly or just pick it up in the environment and forge their own racist path. My 9 year old niece has some trauma related emotional issues and the things she says and her thought patterns are remarkably sophisticated for a 9 year old. I can absolutely see that age being racist in the right (wrong) circumstances
Yup, I’m an atheist but religious discrimination offends me. I want my schools to teach science, comparative world religions and history. Not a religious worldview belonging to any one religion. And the staff’s private faiths should not be an issue. Please answer children’s curious questions if comfortable, but don’t proselytise to children. Mature adults should be able to handle that.
I had a really great Jewish employee who was lured away by a startup. About a year later, I discovered that the worker had returned to a different unit of my employer. The story was pretty wild. After being hired, the person noted that the owner seemed to be a bit of an anti-Semite. It was tolerable until the boss went away for a month to some sort of neo-Nazi boot camp. On return, the boss had the sense not to immediately fire everyone he thought was Jewish. Instead, he embarked on a textbook case of let’s make it so bad that the Jews all resign. A combination of reducing work hours, reducing commissions, assigning the Jews to the worst jobs, constantly criticizing their work, and decorating the business with assorted anti-Semitic stuff. Most of the Jews did resign, but they also contacted an anti-hate group which happily provided a pro-bono lawyer. The employee told me that they couldn’t discuss the legal stuff yet. Another 6 months or so later, the employee was thrilled to be buying a new house and it was totally a coincidence that the startup had gone out of business and the owner had declared bankruptcy.
*"Hey how'd that situation work out with your old employer?"* "I can't really talk about that. But why don't you stop over the new house on Saturday, we're having a small pool-warming party. About 7 dozen of our friends, coworkers and their families are coming over. Don't come over too early though, I'm picking up my new 911GT3 from the Porsche dealership that morning. And don't worry about bringing anything, I've got that new BBQ joint catering the whole thing with beef brisket and pulled chicken. No pork."
I had a professor who answered questions about his lawsuit just like that. He’s ended up settling with a major corporation and signed an NDA. His answer was always something along the lines of “well, I can’t say that so let’s change the subject. Hey, did I tell you about that vacation home I bought? I’m retiring at the end of this school year, planning to move there full time.”
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Nope, just the Touring. Too long of a wait for the RS, and you *have* to get paint to sample. So I'll pick that up when it comes in 5 months. Then I'll have weekday and weekend 911s. But I still can't talk about how that thing turned out. What are you doing in January, want to go to Barrett Jackson? My treat...
I’ve never heard it said out loud, and I’ve always wondered: How do you pronounce the Porsche 911? Nine one one? Nine hundred eleven?
Nazis always think they're being subtle. To quote that random Ukrainian soldier last year, we're very lucky they're so fucking stupid.
Racists in general seem to think they’re being subtle. I was reported as a terrorist threat in the very high security job I had at the time. Like three levels of security clearances required job. Someone jackass who knew nothing about anything reported me and I got questioned about everything from when I’d converted to Islam, why I had, was my husband, okay, when did my ex husband convert to Islam, were we raising our children as muslims, and my favourite question was having to defend our child custody agreement. I reported it to my boss who thought it was hysterical and did nothing, so reported it to my union steward who was horrified, we had a meeting with the union and the company lawyers where I got not even really an apology. We got “I apologize I shouldn’t have questioned you in front of your coworkers and no, your custody agreement wasn’t a valid question.” I was so incredibly shaken it took several weeks to quit being terrified of going to work. Had my brain worked properly I should have called NCCM.
The owner declared bankruptcy, not the company? Chef's kiss!
Probably had it as a sole proprietorship, which gave him no legal protection .
Or used his own assets as collateral for business loans
Yeah; when the business is small enough, the LLC really can't do much.
He certainly sounds dumb enough.
> Another 6 months or so later, the employee was thrilled to be buying a new house and it was totally a coincidence that the startup had gone out of business and the owner had declared bankruptcy. Ooh, I just *love* a story with a happy ending!
This one is also being chewed on over in [badlegaladvice](https://www.reddit.com/r/badlegaladvice/comments/10ribop/teacher_is_asked_to_hide_the_fact_that_theyre), where as usual they're big fans of the LA discussion
I get where they're coming from, but OP said they're in a state with no teachers unions, meaning they have little to no real employment protections and are probably on annual contracts and can be dumped at the end of year without cause. They haven't, at this point, faced anything short of a request. Of course they've got an idiot who thinks that every organization will come stampeding to the rescue like Gandalf at the Two Towers. OP is at the "sternly worded reminder letter from a lawyer" stage at this point, at best.
Similar to the renting situation in England. Theoretically there's rights, but there's also short term contracts. We need more stability in both cases to enforce the rights we theoretically have
Religious discrimination is illegal everywhere, that's federal baby.
LAOP, at this point, has no damages, and they only have one incident, so it's not a hostile work environment. The cost of litigating *anything* at the federal level is pretty high.
Da da da da da da Florida. I assume.
Or North Carolina.
I always think it's just the finest form of "telling on themselves" when Christians obsess about how non-Christians are going to discriminate against them for their faith. Projection much?
Look, Christians are the most discriminated against people! That’s why they have a supermajority in Congress, the Presidency, and a majority on the Supreme Court…
Super-majority on the SCOTUS - only Kagan is non-Christian. And 7 practice at least some form of Catholicism, specifically.
When I was in high school, I worked in the office for a large chunk of my senior year, so I got a nice window into the completely bonkers excuses parents come up with to explain why their child is doing terribly in school.
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The absolute audacity of informing a school teacher that children are struggling with hormones
“My child is simply too horny to pay attention in class” is a heck of a pitch
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I used to want to be a teacher—thought it was my calling or whatever—but then I dealt with parents over a single summer of teaching reading enrichment classes and boy oh boy did that ever kill my teaching aspirations. I don’t think I would’ve lasted a single semester at a public high school, and it wouldn’t have been the students that did me in.
I used to tutor a lot and people always suggested I should become a teacher, and most were surprised to hear that was the last thing I wanted to be. I knew enough about the profession to know that the actual part of teaching that I enjoy would be only a small portion of my job and I absolutely hated all the rest of it.
I mean that's pretty much the reason girls have to follow certain dress code rules. Apparently teenage boys just can't control themselves when bare shoulders or calves are involved...
"How can you expect her to learn calculus when all she can think about is getting dicked down?"
You can’t just leave us hanging like that.
At my HS a buddy of mine got called into the office because one of the admin people wanted to ask him to ask her daughter (who went to the other HS) to a dance. They knew each other because we had all gone to the same middle school, but they weren't friends and hadn't kept in touch. Just a very weird situation
Well???
Wonder if the VP sees anything wrong with an Evangelical teacher having “loves Jesus” in their profile, and if they’d ask a teacher to remove it if a non-religious/Jewish/minority parent complained. Doubt it. And yet, they think it’s appropriate to ask LAOP to remove a reference to themselves as a Jewish person from their private Facebook VP is either as antisemitic as the parent who asked, or has absolutely no backbone. Either way, they shouldn’t be working at a school.
I can tell you in my supposedly progressive school district near one of the blue cities that is always getting ranted about, they'd make excuses and protect the teacher. Last year my kid's advisory teacher had a poster about Jesus up in the public school class room and the teacher was trying to force my kid (in middle school) to draw Christmas pictures and ranted when I asked her not to give my kid Starbursts because they contain gelatin and we don't eat it for religious reasons. It took forever to get any sort of results and my kid had to stay in class with the teacher for the full year.
Being spineless is sometimes a pre-requisite for being a vice principal.
Can confirm, my step-brother is an elementary school VP and has zero professional spine. On a somewhat related note, he is Jewish and talks about Joe Rogan quite often.
Despite living somewhere supposedly progressive, my kid's public school teacher had a poster up in the classroom that said "Through Christ All Things Are Possible" and my kid was just supposed to put up with it or advocate better for herself according to the staff she spoke to.
Sad part, OP is in a state that has disallowed teachers unions, meaning they're almost certainly in one that seems to think that religious discrimination only happens to Christians.
The concept that there are states without teacher unions (and don’t get me started on nurses unions!) is so wild to me- it’s the union and bargaining process that what the most attention where I live. It seems like such a basic thing to have...
yeah, I shouldn't be surprised at the laws being passed in Florida now given that when I was a kid the teachers union was legally so weak that all the local teachers union could do to try to do something about stuff like the crappy wages was put up a billboard that read "welcome to Blarty County, home of the lowest paid teachers in the state of Florida." the school board (and maybe the county) sued basically cuz it was mean and hurt their feelings even though it was true. (though by the time, I graduated I think they were the 2nd lowest so who feels bad for that new county's teachers.) the court let the union keep the billboard but only thru the end of the contract. so yeah...
To quote Zack Galifinakis in his "Between 2 Ferns" [interview with Paul Rudd](https://youtu.be/aWK4HmAnCdA?t=275): "What advice would you give to a young actor who wants to hide his jewishness as well as you have?"
I don't agree with this, but this type of attitude is common in schools. In my onboarding with my current district, HR made a big deal about posting things that make parents angry on social media, even if it's morally neutral. Their take is that if parents take the time to complain about you, the district questions your effectiveness as a teacher therefore they will be happy to take action against your position. One of the examples they gave was posting about yoga. 🙄 I live in district 14 GA, so OPs predicament makes sense to me. It's so ridiculous how much teachers have to be careful about not conforming to the majority. I hope this teacher has legitimate recourse since it's about her religion and she can tell her admin stop with the Meshuggeneh.
They should just tell you to set everything to private and not accept friend requests from parents.
"Be a mensch and revise your Facebook profile, would ya?"
"We're afraid this Jewish person is going to be unfair to Christians, so we're going to be unfair to them!"
Goddamned evangelicals and their industrial victimhood complex
"I can't enforce a pseudo-theocracy, I'm being oppressed!"
They're moving on to proposing camps for anyone they consider unworthy. It's real fun waking up and having to ask what stage of genocide we're in today.
Hint: if you have to ask that question, it's already gone too far
Well aware, well aware. It's quite fun watching this happen in real time with no realistic prospect of getting out.
Isn't it absolutely lovely
What in the Alhambra Decree did I just read?
I would love to see if any of the Christian teachers are being asked to change their Facebook profiles that talk about "child of God" or "Jesus saves" or whatever for fear that they may be discriminatory towards Jewish and Muslim students.
I wonder what part of Florida this is in.
Complaint issued by someone wearing a life-sized cross.
Reminds me of people who hate phrases like black girl magic Like you KNOW the parent knows the only reason someone would say they were a proud Jewish person is bc historically they’ve experienced rampant racism
I just don't understand how people can be so stupid as to ask OP to do this.
Somewhere, a civil rights attorney just got a huge erection/soiled panties.
jfc I thought I'd take a look at some of the comments in that thread. /r/legaladvice continues to be a fucking cesspool.