In the year of our Lord 2014, making fun of someone’s ethnicity/sexuality/race is out of bounds.
You don’t do it.

The other day you may remember I wrote a story about a teacher who was fired for allegedly making racist comments on a number of occasions – one in particular to an African American student saying words to the effect that we didn’t need another president like Obama. The student claimed he said, "we didn't need another black president" while the teacher claimed he said, "we didn't need another president, black or white, like Obama.

That plus other comments that were on his record got him fired.

So too it is with Kenneth Czarnecki, a Middlesex County Board of Social Services worker for making racially and ethically based comments toward clients.

He went before an administrative law judge who upheld the decision to fire him based on his remarks.
Before you cry out, “First Amendment”, realize, first of all, that the First Amendment protects you in the event you criticize the government.

Your rights to free speech, especially in the workplace, don’t protect you from consequences.

In the previous article I’d written about my sophomore Spanish teacher.

Back when I was in Nazareth HS in 1967, my Spanish teacher, Brother Russell, used to take fiendish delight in breaking the chops of the Italian American kids in the class.

There was one kid whose darker skin caught Brother’s sarcastic wit, saying he dripped of “Mazola oil!” I remember that clear as day.

That was in 1967; and we didn’t think too much of it then.

While he may have had a deep seated bias toward Italian Americans, we all thought of him as a ball-breaker and that was it.

However another story had to do with a lawsuit filed by a former student at Sayreville HS suing the Sayreville Board of Education, claiming a teacher made racist comments and hurled threats at him during his senior year in high school.

The student, now out of the school, claimed that the teacher called him a “gangbanger” during the past school year and also said, “You steal cars in Newark” and “You’re going to be dead before you’re 21.”

Would you consider any of these permissible, racist - or mere ball busting. And do you feel we've lost our sense of humor.

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