Posted on 05/06/2002 4:21:05 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
(WSVN) Zita Wilensky loves to help people. In fact she is a foster mother to kids with special needs.
Zita Wilensky, a victim of discrimination, says "Right now we have a little boy. We are in the process of adopting and he is learning delayed, but he is coming along great."
Professionally, Zita is not doing so well. She says, "I really do feel I was discriminated against and if I didn't I wouldn't be telling you."
Zita worked for Miami-Dade County for 16 years. The last two in the Domestic Violence Unit.
Her file is full of letters of praise, but she began to encounter one major problem.
She says, "I was referred to as the gringa, the Americana. Did they mean it in a polite way or a deragatory way? In some ways at times it was joking. But then it was like every single day and you know what? I have a name."
Zita was the only Anglo in the County Unit. All of her co-workers were Hispanic and she says they liked to play tricks on her.
She says, "My boss presented me with an envelope one day when the anthrax was going around and told me "come here could you smell this? This just came in the mail." Big joke in front of the whole department. Made me look like an idiot."
Then Zita was told she had to speak Spanish in the office. She was given 60 days to learn. After 30 days her boss disguised her voice and called her.
Zita says, "So she called pretending to be someone who didn't speak English. And when you could not communicate she fired you? Yes...that's how it happened."
According to a county document, Zita was fired for transferring the call to the clerk's office. Zita said she transferred it because she wanted what she thought was a Spanish speaking caller to talk to someone.
Either way, despite her protests, after 16 years with the county, Zita was fired and replaced by an Hispanic.
Now her question: can an Anglo be fired for not speaking Spanish on the job?
Howard Finkelstein, 7News Legal Expert, says "The Florida Constituion says that English is the official language of the government. So you can't fire someone simply because they don't speak Spanish and you can't fire them simply because they are Anglo. That's discrimination. That's illegal."
Howard says you cannot be discrimated against based upon national origin, religion, sex, and race. Such as blacks, whites, hispanics, asians, and on and on.
and howard says that includes the treatment employees like zita receive on the job.
"An employer cannot allow an employee to be subjected to racial slurs like gringo, or to be ridiculed or intimidated...thats called a hostile work enviroment and thats illegal."
Zita would like to go back to work for Miami-Dade County, not in the same office, but in a place where no kind of discrimination is tolerated.
When we talked to a county official, we were told Zita was fired because she transferred calls improperly.
They also deny she was fired because she was an anglo and she was not required to speak Spanish.
Her boss just requested that she learn Spanish. But contradicting that, this letter from her boss says its a necessity that she speaks Spanish.
Howard says if Zita sues the county, she has an excellant chance of winning.
Zita says right now she simply wants to find a job.
Problems don't discriminate - so race to the phone. We'll have an answer clear in any language.
I know the feeling, my friend.
Stop the flow of Germans into Pennsylvania, Franklin warned, or ''they will soon so outnumber us, that ... we will not in my opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.''
A few generations after Franklin agonized over immigration flows from Germany, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge worried about the influx from Central and Southern Europe. To slow it, he proposed a literacy requirement - one that immigrants from Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Italy would be less likely to meet.
''The races most affected by the illiteracy test are those whose emigration to this country has begun within the last 20 years,'' Lodge explained in March 1896, ''races with which the English-speaking people have never hitherto assimilated, and who are most alien to the great body of the people of the United States.''
That's wrong, they should not call you names like that because you are a black conservative.
And conservatives should stop calling them parasites and vermin.
Funny thing is, anytime I ask that question, the answer comes back invariably that their ancestors came here on the Mayflower, and married a native American.
According to my findings, we should change the name of Cooper's book to "The Next To The Last Mohican."
Want to see a form of racism?
When did speaking Spanish make people non-white?
And having the opportunity to put a clause in the constitution that would establish an official language (they debated the issue) they chose not to do so.
My lovely spouses' family names are McFranklin and McCarville. No great mystery to how they were greeted upon immigrating. "Irish need not apply."
What we didn't see was the Irish taking over the government and then making all other government employees speak Irish.
Assimillation is the problem. Seems that many Spanish speaking people would rather be separate than integrate.
1) We need to control the borders, and 2) the people who are here, given enough time, will assimilate.
They will leave their mark on the society, look around at the marks left by all immigrant groups, but they will all assimilate.
I am a first generation immigrant, my kids do not speak Spanish, but they love Cuban food...we have assimilated just like everyone before us.
Uhh, excuse my interuption here but....no one in THIS Country, especially one who works for the government, should EVER be REQUIRED to speak a FOREIGN language. Those who come here should be learning OUR language not expecting to US to learn THEIRS'. PERIOD.
You have never been to Boston?
I don't see Mexican immigrants "taking over the government", I see our government doing some really stupid crap to appease them.
"...and then making all other government employees speak Irish."
I can't understand about 80% of what Ted Kennedy says.
Where do you get people to work as translators for foreign dignitaries? How would the CIA, FBI et al. monitor foreign news?
I guess you don't want anyone employed by the US government to transalate intercepted terrorist communications.
Come on! Use your head!
I don't see Mexican immigrants "taking over the government", I see our government doing some really stupid crap to appease them.
Here in S. Florida we have Spanish speaking people from all over Latin America. Hardly any Mexicans. Specifically, it is the Cubans who have taken over Miami-Dade politics.
Miami-Dade county is now about 40% Hispanic, 30% Black, 20% White/Non-Hispanic, and the rest "other". It is obvious from the elections and the polls that Hispanics vote as a block against non-hispanics. The blacks, when they vote, tend to vote in a block against non-blacks. The whites tend not to vote.
Traveling to Miami is like visiting a foreign country. You can shop in malls and find not one English speaking sales clerk. There are large areas of Miami-Dade where you will not see ANY business signs in English. If you call any government office you are guaranteed that the person you are speaking to will have an accent thick enought to cut with a knife.
There is a huge "white flight" happening where those that can are moving to the more northern Broward and Palm Beach Counties.
This is not assimilation. It is invasion.
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