Jason Bailey, he of the most statistically useless season in Michigan hockey history, is suing the Anaheim Ducks organization for anti-Semitism.
Among his claims - the team (Ducks' ECHL affiliate Bakersfield Condors, to be specific) wouldn't play him because he is Jewish. I think they wouldn't play him because he is essentially useless.
Seems legit to me
If that's the case he can't
If that's the case he can't really sue the organization. When he brought his concerns to the higher up they did what they were suppose to do and got rid of the people who he thought was holding him back. That was the organizations responsibility to him, and they did their part. If he still can't find playing time I don't think he has anybody ot blame but hisself.
Agreed
I have no idea what the lawsuit will accomplish. I was just pointing out that the article makes it seem like at least part of the discrimination is legit.
Whether or not his ice time suffered as a result... that's what they're going to have to try to prove.
"Over? Did you say, over? Nothing is over until we decide it is!"
Given he was traded and not
Given he was traded and not getting ice time, I wonder if he is about to wash out of organized hockey and is looking for a pay day. He was traded in 2009 and suddenly in 2011 he's coming back looking for a payout. It seems a little odd to me. Yes there was discrimination, but the Ducks took action and he seemed happy with it at the time. Now 2 years after the trade (and even longer since the incident) he's suing.
I caught this yesterday on
I caught this yesterday on WSJ and thought of posting it but for the evil site bug. They led off with an important note about context:
Quick disclosure: We have never played professional sports and do not know what passes for bonhomie or hard-edge humor in a locker room.So, we have little context to bring to this post about a suit filed by 23-year-old Jewish hockey player Jason Bailey (pictured), who claims that certain coaches with the Anaheim Ducks of the NHL subjected Bailey to a hostile and discriminatory work environment.
I've been in enough locker rooms, and been subjected to enough real discrimination for being Jewish to be certain enough of this: It's really really hard to tell the difference. You have to know the person well enough to understand where it's coming from. In most cases, the offense is entirely inadvertent, but also entirely meant. This happens with even close friends -- they get these ideas of stereotypes in their heads and throw 'em out there, not meaning to offend, but meaning to have them kind of confirmed. It's like by joking around, it then makes it okay to be stereotyping, because "hey, I've got a Jewish friend and he's fine with it."
The reason this stuff is so hard to get across is that it takes understanding another person's perceptions. Also, when you're the target, you don't want to be that douchebag who "can't take a joke." This is especially true when you're in a lockerroom with a bunch of other athletes. Or when it's your boss.
My sense of this story is that the one coach has a Jewish (ex?) wife whose family he doesn't get along with or understand, and that he seems to have internalized that into a "Jews are like X" internal understanding. This doesn't make the coach a bad person, but it does mean he has to be very careful about letting his thoughts turn into actions. It's apparent from the complaint that he didn't do this -- rather he sought to have his racist feelings justified by giving them voice in a context where it was pretty safe that they wouldn't be called out as prejudice. The result instead was that his prejudices were exposed, and created a really bad atmosphere for Jason.
We've gotten to a point where Godwin's Law is brought out every time any hating is alleged. The unsubtle forms of antisemitism are very rare, but this kind of stuff is ubiquitous, because people are notoriously bad at giving their prejudices critical thought. To progress to a level where it affects your decisions and actions in any work environment is rightly punished by society.
I don't know how much the Ducks are liable here. Maybe some for keeping the suspensions private. That this could happen, however, is entirely believable to me.
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Not Jewish, but being in a
Not Jewish, but being in a hockey locker room with people of different beliefs/colors/politics/whatever, you know when people are making a joke or not.
If two people aren't damn good friends poking fun at one another, it's going to start a fight and it's going to be pretty obvious. The guy can't just drop the gloves with his boss, but the rest of the team would know it immediately if he said anything in the locker room.
Go Blue!
Great insights. Like you
Great insights. Like you said, I think it mostly boils down to a) really making sure you know someone before throwing something out there that might even have a chance of offending someone and b) taking a good hard look at whether the stereotypes you're referring to are something that could be very offensive if taken out of context.
Punny
What a quack.
It's great to be a Michigan Wolverine
I dunno how legit the lawsuit is, but the descrimination sounds legitimate:
"Bailey alleges that both Condors' assistant head coach Mark Pederson and head coach Martin Raymond made anti-Semitic remarks."
"Both coaches were suspended in 2009. The Bakersfield Californian reported that the reason was related to Bailey."
I dunno if there's more of a lawsuit behind this, but it sounds like the slurs were there according to this article
"Over? Did you say, over? Nothing is over until we decide it is!"