They can fire you for being white or male?

Yes. They can't discriminate based on sex, race, color, national origin, physical disability (unless, say, you're blind and applying for a job as an airline pilot), religion, age (over 40).

I'm so confused. Now I'm sure that my question wasn't clear. If they can fire you for being white male, then they can discriminate based on race and/or gender.

Ah, well. I'm dizzy enough. I'm letting it go.

To drive a point into the ground, I asked if they could fire you for those reasons and she said "pretty much, yeah."

I believe we are having an epidemic of missing (or mentally inserted) "not"s and similar. Like in Allyson's post, above. I'm pretty sure she means No when she says Yes, given the rest of the post.

This is why the term, "reverse discrimination" makes my head explode. No one owns discrimination.

You're in my brain, Allyson. This is a huge peeve of mine. There is no "reverse discrimination", there's just discrimination.

If yes means no, dating just got a lot more complicated.

there's just discrimination.

It's sloppy. There's discrimination against the franchised, and against the disenfranchised. People just love to forget about the former being essentially the same thing, although rooted differently, and having many other different characteristics.

If yes means no, dating just got a lot more complicated.

Hee!

In other confusing news, the woman who was the biggest hard-ass on my trip (ie, doing school work at midnight when the rest of us were rolling in from dinner and drinks) has been sending all these "fun" emails about hanging out. Dude, seriously? Now you want to hang out?

It's sloppy.

I don't think I understand what you mean.

Dude, seriously? Now you want to hang out?

Seriously!

The meeting dumper didn't show to the meeting, despite his boss's assurance that he would. Neither did the other key player. Oy. Reschedule joy.

Seriously.

OK. I need to take a little walk to get lunch so that at least I leave the house today. Where to go, where to go.

I don't think I understand what you mean.

The term "reverse discrimination." People don't seem to mean "discrimination" before they put it in reverse, so much as "discriminating against the disenfranchised."

There's discrimination against the franchised, and against the disenfranchised. People just love to forget about the former being essentially the same thing, although rooted differently, and having many other different characteristics.

I don't think there's anything about my statement that is at odds with acknowledging institutionalized racism. I'm pro-affirmative action. I'm against one particular group thinking they're the only ones who suffer discrimination and that because of their membership in that group they are congenitally incapable of discriminating against others. I'm not saying that's what you're saying, but that is an attitude that I see around my town a lot and it's wrong-headed. The sooner people realize that discrimination comes in all packages, the sooner we'll be able to root it out.