Coworker told me I'm not white because I'm Italian
I work part-time at a movie theater to make ends meet. Recently we've had a coworker on a hateful tear and management has been extremely hesitant to do anything about it. For months people have danced around this employees behavior because he makes us all feel unsafe.
Let me say first off that I understand whiteness is often used to define what you aren't rather than what you are. I have a very Italian first and last name. I'm 4th generation with very loose connections to my heritage.
A coworker told me at my part-time recently that I'm not white because I'm Italian and that information "is biologically important to an honest discussion." He told me I'm not a "heritage American." What the fuck??
I didn't just stand there and take it. I told him he sounds like an 1800s racist and he doubled down. I thought he was fucking with me but it was really clear he wasn't.
It has made future shifts with him awkward as hell because now he refuses to speak to me at all. It's very unprofessional and weird. I've reported him, as have others for similar racist shit (saying the n word on the clock, calling other coworkers the r slur, talking out of pocket about how sexy he thinks Eastern European women are, being a creep to highschool seniors we work with even though he's in his late 40s) but I really needed to get this off my chest here because it's weird.