Vaxcrimination: The One Thing They Can Discriminate Against You For

If you’ve applied for a job in the last 10 or 20 years, I’m sure you’ve noticed a thing they all post at the end of their job listing—it’s the Equal Opportunity Employer thing. There are laws against discrimination, so many employers list their hiring practices to let every know they’re obeying the law. A smaller company called E&J Gallo Winery keeps it simple: Equal Opportunity Employer. Other organizations now use this declaration to advertise their wokeness. Take a look at Google’s EOE statement:

“At Google, we don’t just accept difference — we celebrate it, we support it, and we thrive on it for the benefit of our employees, our products, and our community. Google is proud to be an equal opportunity workplace and is an affirmative action employer.”

So inspiring. Affirmative action—that relic of the 1960s that imagined a world where everyone was hired based on the color of their skin—has never delivered on its promises but that’s never stopped white guilt from perpetuating its ignorance. Dell, the computer company started in a guy’s college dorm room, has one of the more amazing EOE statements:

“Dell is an Equal Opportunity Employer and Prohibits Discrimination and Harassment of Any Kind: Dell is committed to the principle of equal employment opportunity for all employees and to providing employees with a work environment free of discrimination and harassment. All employment decisions at Dell are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion or belief, national, social or ethnic origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, physical, mental or sensory disability, HIV Status, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, marital, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. Dell will not tolerate discrimination or harassment based on any of these characteristics.”

If you were able to make it through that entire list, congratulations. As someone with extreme sensory issues when it comes to taste (I eat like a 4-year-old with absentee parents), I’m glad to know that Dell will not discriminate against my various food aversions. I think it’s safe to say that Dell is the place you want to work if no one else will hire you—that is, unless you’re opting to skip the coronavirus vaccine.

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It aimed to prevent employment discrimination based on race, sex, color (whatever that means), religion and national origin. I’m not old enough to know what things were like back then but based on my conversations with an old-timer I often see around the tennis courts (who is black), it didn’t sound like things were too bad. He went to the “black” high school in town. I asked him what it was like and he said, “We loved it. We had a great time back then.” I asked him if he was mad that whites and blacks went to separate schools and he looked at, me shocked. “No!” he said. “We wouldn’t have known what to do with all those whites. We were just fine as is.” I’d always assumed there was anger there, but for the decent folks who get no joy from playing a perpetual victim, they are at least ambivalent—if not nostalgic—about much of the past.

In the time that has passed, the ways in which people can be discriminated against have shot into the hundreds, possibly thousands—a by-product of the matriarchal society we have become. Organizations, enabled by their human resources departments, have followed suit with every new grievance and promised not to hurt anyone’s feelings when they hire you.

I find this situation interesting because organizations have already begun discriminating openly against people like me who refuse to be injected with experimental gene therapy they call the coronavirus vaccine. I’ve already seen stories of nurses being fired. A restaurant worker in New York, I believe, was fired. Other terminations are sure to follow. A recent survey indicated that over 60% of employers are going to require proof of vaccination before their workers can return to the office.

This vaxcrimination, if I may use the hashtag-ready word, is going to get real ugly fast if state legislatures cannot get ahead of this. It may just be airplanes or restaurants or an André Rieu concert for now, but there are likely going to be emergency services that are denied to people if there isn’t a law against it. Firemen may not come inside your house. Police may not respond to a burglary. Ambulances may not to your rescue and Emergency Rooms may not let you in even if they did. This may become a very bad situation if politicians don’t start thinking about how to head this off right now.

If you are someone who has that special skill of contacting your politicians and getting others to do the same, I would seriously consider getting people to begin asking their local and state representatives to consider laws that will prevent the unvaccinated from being discriminated against. I’ve given up on the thought of flying or going to certain restaurants. Still undecided on the André Rieu concert—might be worth the vaccine. Regardless, if you start being denied emergency services or medical care because you have chosen to skip the coronavirus vaccine (or others), the laws may come too late for some.