Hostess at Disney Restaurant Sent Home for Wearing Hijab

by Sarah Menkedick · 2010-08-22 09:00:00 UTC
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Imane Boudlal showed up for work last Sunday at the Storyteller's Café in Disney's Grand Californian Hotel and Spa wearing her hijab and was promptly given the choice of working in the back of the store, out of public view, or being sent home without pay. She went home.

Boudlal then filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and attempted to return to work, where she was told the same thing: work in the back or leave. Finally, this past Wednesday, she brought the media and a crowd of supporters with her. Disney's answer didn't change.

In an impressive show of general obliviousness to the implications of discriminating against a worker on the basis of religion, Disney spokeswoman Suzi Brown insisted that Boudlal wasn't being denied the right to work since Disney ever so kindly allowed her to work "in a backstage role."

Ah, the largesse of Disney! We won't allow you to work in the job you were hired for or to adhere to your religious beliefs, but we will throw you back in the stockroom where you won't embarrass us! At least we don't fire you straight out!

Oh, the ironies, the ironies! There are so many. One obvious one is the ongoing self-righteous and morally bombastic talk about saving Muslim women from the tyrants stealing their freedom, which quickly becomes self-righteous and morally bombastic talk about preventing Muslim women from exercising their right and choice to wear what they please. One minute, a sensationalist Time magazine cover about how we need to protect Afghan women; the next, the refusal of the rights of a Muslim woman to exercise the very freedom we're supposed to be at war for.

Another irony is Disney's cheery lets-learn-about-cultural-diversity! shtick, so quickly revealed to be one-dimensional B.S the second any real, non-Hollywoodized diversity threatens Disney's safe, white, middle class American image. Ameena Qazi, a lawyer for the Council On American-Islamic Relations (which is representing Boudlal) points this out quite clearly, asking whether anyone who's denying Boudlal the right to wear the hijab has ever taken a ride on the famous Disney diversity love-fest "It's A Small World After All."

I'd guess not. But in any case, Disney has proved that its fuzzy openness towards diversity ends the second the ride stops.

Photo credit: Raymond Brown

Sarah Menkedick is a freelance writer currently based in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has spent the last five years teaching, writing and traveling on five continents. She regularly writes about women's rights.
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