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Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Jack Morris under fire for using Asian accent during Shohei Ohtani at-bat
Tigers announcer and Hall of Fame pitcher Jack Morris was criticizing after using an accent to answer a question about Shohei Ohtani in Detroit’s game against the Angels on Tuesday night.
Morris was asked by Bally Sports play-by-play man Matt Shepard what the Tigers “should do with Shohei Ohtani?” during his at-bat in the sixth inning.
Morris responded by attempting to use an Asian accent and saying, “Be very, very careful.”
The 66-year-old Morris apologized before Ohtani’s next at-bat.
“Well folks, Shohei Ohtani is coming to the plate and it’s been brought to my attention, and I sincerely apologize if I offended anybody, especially anybody in the Asian community for what I said about pitching and being careful to Shohei Ohtani,” Morris said.
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: August 18, 2021 at 11:37 AM | 515 comment(s)
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ok, flip fantasia!
Cool story, bro - bringing about social justice via being distracted by right-wing hucksters from several years ago. Tell me, how is that false dichotomy between principles/outcomes working out for you? Good? Hey, I know, maybe if we all work together, we can get one of Ben Shapiro's posts flagged on Facebook!!!!
"The death penalty is unjust and cruel. Even murderers don't deserve that."
"No; having to answer for your own actions isn't unjust or cruel; it's just accountability."
Maybe it's not fear or intimidation — but simply saying, "No, it's accountability" doesn't refute that argument. It just labels it.
He wrote an apology saying he was wrong as he was leaving, that doesnt sound like groveling to me, sounds to me like someone who wouldnt apologize for a long time finally realizing that there are ways to discuss racism with teens that dont require you to drop offensive racist terms, which by the way is always true.
So you wish to assume that it could only be the twitter posts she made when she was 17 , but we cannot possibly know that. and thats the problem, as outsiders to the hiring and firing practices of a company we are left to guess. My guess is no ,they werent the deciding factor since they hired her in spite of knowing her past.
I'm a former 60's civil rights worker with a lifelong interest in the totalitarian / authoritarian mentality, an interest that's been concentrated on the evils of fascism, Communism and racism, all of which are based on a desire on the part of the strong to dominate the weak in order to maintain their real or perceived privileges. I am not a "free speech absolutist" in the way it seems you think I am. I wish Facebook and Twitter had banned Trump in 2015 once it was clear where he was going, and I wish that they were much more proactive in removing disinformation than they are today.
I mean, the First Amendment is OK and all, but the idiosyncrasies of American jurisprudence, which in practice have basically equated speech with money and done very little to fight white supremacy,
I loathed the Citizens United decision and its underlying principle of Money = Speech. At the very least I think any nonprofit organization that engages in political activities should be required to post a list of all their donors.
But neither Don McNeil nor Jack Morris nor Lani Guinier (to take a difference example of the same phenomenon) were either trying to overthrow the government or trying to promote racism. Big difference.
are really not the only way to work toward a more just/equal society. So much liberalism, so little taking institutional power seriously.
Maybe you skipped over the part where I denounced institutional racism, which AFAIC should be the primary target of anti-racism campaigns, not isolated individuals who may or may not even be racists.
Maybe read a little critical race theory? Don’t worry, it’s not a required course!
Oh, for Christ's sake. I was reading about CRT when it was little more than an academic cult. But at this point CRT is like the elephant whose various body parts a group of blind men are touching and assuming they understand the whole.
And stop caping so much for Black conservatives; it’s just not a good look for white folks, regardless of how significant their library holdings….
Wait, are you seriously trying to say that John McWhorter is a "conservative" in the way that today's Trump-loving, gay-baiting "conservatives" define themselves? If you do, I'd suggest you expand your reading list yourself. Or does "conservative" just mean anyone who opposes the idea that people should be judged by their worst moments?
“Wokeism” is about power, not about principles; not everybody can afford to value principles over outcomes. If I can stop Milo from speaking at my university, I will do so regardless of liberal concerns about free speech, because I regard stopping* him as a step on the way to producing a more just/equal society.
That'd be a lot more convincing if there were the slightest bit of evidence that all that "antifa" #### had ever accomplished anything more than given the GOP a simplistic new talking point.
Ask yourself, are you living in a hypothetical society when you attack “wokeism” & “cancel culture” / defend free speech in this weird reflexive way? Is the precise American instantiation of the principle just a means to an end, or are you taking it as an end in itself?
Short answer: It's both. I oppose "wokeism" and "cancel culture" both on general principle AND because in the long run they're totally counterproductive. No matter how virtuous they see themselves, and no matter how much Fox News tries to inflate their influence, they're never going to accomplish anything that's both positive and lasting. I'm a fan of the long run war against racism, which today should be centered on voting rights, not getting bogged down in fleeting sideshow battles. YMMV.
"In asking the question, I used the slur itself,” McNeil said in his note to the staff. “I should not have done that. Originally, I thought the context in which I used this ugly word could be defended. I now realize that it cannot. It is deeply offensive and hurtful. The fact that I even thought I could defend it itself showed extraordinarily bad judgment. For that I apologize.”
He appears well aware he used it , even if you are somehow trying to deflect his usage with the word "mentioned".
Curious how you see the right wing mob of usual suspects who ganged up and went after the 22 year old ex-AP writer Emily Wilder? Do you see that as cancel culture or as something different?
Curious how you see the right wing mob of usual suspects who ganged up and went after the 22 year old ex-AP writer Emily Wilder? Do you see that as cancel culture or as something different?
I only vaguely recall the Wilder case, but my reaction would depend 100% on whether her views had actually colored her reporting. If there was any objective evidence of that, then her firing was justified.
But if it no such evidence was produced, then it looks like the AP was just covering its ass from the same sort of reflexive outrage that you see so often on Twitter, and yes, it would be an example of CC.
Reporters have political opinions, whether they admit it or not. Reporters shouldn't let those opinions be reflected in the text of their reporting. Since I hadn't read Wilder's dispatches, I'm really not able to say much more than that.
Obviously, the answer is to get rid of cancel culture, but the leftists will never agree and so here we are.
And Cersei Lannister was "well aware" of her transgressions when she voluntarily did the walk of shame.
On the basis of what you say, and assuming there's not more to it,** then yes, Wilder was the victim of the same sort of reflexive corporate CYA that gets decried when it goes in the other direction.
** Such as calling for the destruction of Israel; parroting memes involving Jewish stereotypes; etc.
I remember when the hippies were aghast that the Dixie Chicks weren't enthusiastic supporters of a Republican president and demanded their censure. I wish Dalton Trumbo was around to make a movie about but he'd been cancelled twice by then, the second time irrevocably.
Paul Robeson says hi from about 5-odd decades before the Dixie Chicks. And the Weavers. And the Hollywood 10 (speaking of Dalton Trumbo). And, going by the Wikipedia (not definitive, of course, but still) roster of the blacklisted from those days, at least a couple of hundred others.
Too bad that you can't copy images directly onto BTF, but this link shows a picture of Red Channels, a book that was commonly referred to as the Blacklisters' Bible, a 213 page book naming 151 names, that came out in 1950. Its listed names were constantly added to for years after that. And as you'll note, as it only covered radio and TV, and not the movies, the names listed within were only a portion of those affected.
The author of the introduction to Red Channels later started a bulletin which kept naming more and more names, until one of those names (John Henry Faulk) sued him and eventually won a libel suit that effectively put the blacklisters out of business. But it took about 15 years before that happy denouement was achieved.
edit: also not a philosophical or linguistical matter. Not a philosopher or a linguist, but neither is anyone else here (probably).
Seriously, who gives a flying #### what he thinks? It obviously has zero bearing on the point that Nieporent is making. This is the most pointless appeal-to-authority fallacy that I've ever seen.
Again, why these dumb little childish responses? Do you honestly not have anything to say that's more sophisticated than this nonsense you're churning out? Do you really care so little about the social justice issues that you're pretending to care about that you can't be bothered to think harder about what you say than an average third-grader?
Please grow up.
I'm obviously late, but this is a hilarious assertion.
Yeah but still people are giving him too much credit - his greater point was genuinely insane even if it actually was true that "leftists started the cancel culture to begin with."
And Andy this was an email to his staff after he had resigned so not sure what points he was trying to score with them in this case, not sure the show trial analogy stretches far enough to cover this unless you are suggesting the times coerced him into writing it and he actually wasnt sorry in the least?
David beat me to it, but in my defense I was so wrapped up in the Yankees game that I hadn't had the time to re-read the McNeil piece again until just now.
And what David says is absolutely true: That apology was totally pro forma. It was in the form of an explanation of the context surrounding what he'd said. Nobody who reads those four pages with an open mind could come out thinking that he was really "apologizing" for anything beyond having expressed himself in a way that a bunch of teenagers obviously misunderstood. And his resignation was obviously forced, about as voluntary as his "apology". The Times simply bowed to a juiced up campaign against him that had no interest in anything but seeing him gone. It wasn't the Times' finest hour.
however the issue of dropping the n-bomb in front of a group of teens could still get you fired here, pretty easily at my workplace ( which has educational classes from the very young up to teens and adults) and after a quick google search it appears that in some cases it gets you canned south of the border as well, is it your and Davids position that these firing are not acceptable?
It's not "nonsensical bullshit," it's just that you very plainly have no idea what an appeal-to-authority fallacy is. Maybe they don't teach that kind of thing in the big cities, I dunno.
But, now that I've led you this close to the water - drink horse, drink.
Without the implied "Twitter era cancel culture," I suppose it could be seen that way -- so I'll explicitly add the "Twitter era" here and de-hilarious-ize it.
I long ago noted the obvious parallels between the righty McCarthy era cancel culture and the modern Twitter-era lefty cancel culture. If anything, the show trial-esque forced confessions are even worse today, and it's truly "hilarious" to see people who see them as objective evidence of anything.
Bu-bu-but, he admitted his wrongoing!!!! Seriously?
(*) Notwithstanding the fact that this capitalization is itself a rather strange act of sanctification, and thus part of the underlying religion, McWhorter capitalizes so in order to focus attention on more important things, I will go along.
(**) All of us, on some level, know that this is nonsense, and readers who think I am making this point only to white people are quite mistaken. I mean all of us. Neither slavery nor Jim Crow nor redlining renders a people’s judgment of where racism has reared its head infallible.
Treating a people with dignity requires not only listening closely and sympathetically to their grievances, but being able to take a deep breath and call them on aspects of those grievances that don’t make sense. And there will be some, unless those airing the grievance are fictional creations instead of human beings.
It's not a fake accusation (*); it's a senseless and aggressive and primitive one.
(*) The use/mention distinction which obviously passed far over your head still holds, but it's not the most important point. "He used the n-word, fire him" is a childish and unenlightened perspective.
It totally depends on the context, and the context isn't something that's always easy to determine. But McNeil's quoting the n-word in front of a select group of presumably precocious teenagers shouldn't have even come close to crossing that line of unacceptablity. Should a teacher be fired for assigning books where the n-word is used repeatedly, just because it makes some students "uncomfortable" or "threatened"? What about books where you can read "white motherfucker" many times within its pages? Should a teacher be fired for assigning books like that as well? Or should their assignments have to be vetted by the producers of Sesame Street? Do teachers have any say in this matter, or should the proper use of quoted language be determined by the most easily offended students?
Hearing it a ten thousand and first time strikes the fair-minded and rational observer as the quintessential drop in the bucket.
Andy up here the goalposts are constantly shifting as to what teachers can and can no longer teach in the classroom and at what point it is considered ok to introduce material that uses strong language or racist terms etc, I am less aware of how your system south of the border handles this but its on ongoing and evolving situation.
Should the teachers have any say ? yes but times have changed and teachers have to be aware of this, because folks do appear to be getting fired in the states for merely reading material in university that we read in high school without any controversy. So treading lightly on these matters may well be the new norm. is that destroying our society and making us all worse people that some folks now recoil in anger or horror at a teacher dropping a highly offensive racist term? I do not think so, it seems regrettable when it happens in some occasions but the key is educating teachers to the new reality of changing society where folks are far more intolerant of racism and its terminology than they were in a not so distant past.
That something else appears to be circumscribing the freedom of thought and expression of white people and white people alone.(*) Some people might be ok with that, but it's important to describe the thing that those some people are ok with accurately, rather than fictitiously.
(*) Had, for example, McNeil not been definitively white -- if he'd been speaking on tape for example -- the outcry would have been far less. It's not the word itself; it's the combination of the word and a definitively white person saying it that's the issue. We know for a fact that no one is trying to reduce the number of times white ears hear the n-word, so that isn't the issue. It's hard to credit a principle that "if it's heard from someone not definitively white, it's perfectly fine; if it's heard from someone definitively white, it's not." At that point, it's not even the word itself; it's the circumscribing of white people.
I think it is more that he was in a leadership role when he said the term, to a group he was accompanying on a times sponsored educational trip , I think that is the context which his direct boss seems to be objecting too. I also do not believe that it only pertains to white people, at least not here in Canada , there have been a few cases were different ethnic minorities have throw slurs at asians or blacks or latinos and been fired for their trouble. perhaps that never occurs in the states although most of the insensitive tweets by Alexi McCammond were directed at Asian individuals.
So it's either not a racist term, or it is a racist term and society is extraordinarily racist for passively allowing so many ears, of all races including white, to hear it millions of times per day. Which is it?
Should the teachers have any say ? yes but times have changed and teachers have to be aware of this, because folks do appear to be getting fired in the states for merely reading material in university that we read in high school without any controversy. So treading lightly on these matters may well be the new norm. is that destroying our society and making us all worse people that some folks now recoil in anger or horror at a teacher dropping a highly offensive racist term? I do not think so, it seems regrettable when it happens in some occasions but the key is educating teachers to the new reality of changing society where folks are far more intolerant of racism and its terminology than they were in a not so distant past.
simon,
I think that students should have every right to complain about the use of "offensive" language in assigned reading. But I don't think that their complaints should be presumptively prioritized over the larger interest of introducing students to great (or even not-so-great) works of literature. And the assumption on the part of some (not all) of these teachers' accusers that merely quoting certain racially charged words is in itself "racist", or even "troubling", is so foreign to any rational way of thinking that I find it hard to believe that anyone in authority would take it seriously.
And obviously when I say "context matters", that also refers to the grade level in question. Works that should be perfectly appropriate to assign in high school aren't necessarily appropriate to assign to sixth graders. And even for high schools, I have no problem with prefacing an assignment of (for example) Huckleberry Finn or The Autobiography of Malcolm X with a note that some of the language within those books might be jarring to a 21st century sensibility. It's the same sort of warning that many TV newscasters give when they're about to show gruesome video footage, and it's a concession I can live with.
Right, but the only thing "questionable" about the "situation" was that McNeil was (a) white (*); and (b) identifiable by the listeners as white.(**) Had he delivered the lecture (or whatever it was) by phone or audio only, making him unidentifiable as white -- in other words, not definitively not Black -- the situation would no longer have been "questionable" in the least.
It's a bizarre set of affairs when a definitive defense to the "offense" can be, "But my audience had no way of knowing I wasn't Black."
(*) Or perhaps more precisely: not Black.
(**) Or perhaps more precisely: identifiable by the listeners as not Black.
I do not think we are in disagreement on most points here. Perhaps the only one is how a student responds to material that is racist in tone or uses racist language, the current attitude here is to give students a more rounded curriculum of authors but the classics are still taught, Shakespeare etc. The argument that is made here for the inclusion of works that may include passages that may be troubling to the modern student is that it is an opportunity for discussion and understanding of how the historical context has changed over time. The issue is always how do you tell students from an ethnic minority who faces or has faced systemic discriminations how they have to feel about the use of certain languages or depictions? I do not believe you can , I do not think "Hey you are missing a good book here that just happens to include some racist terms and attitudes " so yeah it is troubling because you want to dictate to those who historically suffered under systemic racism , or are still currently experiencing it how they must respond to material that reinforces what they already go through. And almost nobody in authority here would ignore that, nor do they.
Except that isn't really the issue. The perception of McNeil's "offense" wouldn't be any different if his audience was all white. (I don't know one way or the other -- maybe it was.) Plenty of white people take it upon themselves to stand in loco parentis on behalf of Black people's "feelings."
Right -- that's why I eventually said "not Black."
If a dullard white person turns on a hip hop radio station and hears the n-word all over the place, it isn't readily apparent that the artist is Black (*) -- and yet society permits and commercially encourages that dullard white person to hear the n-word hundreds or thousands of times per day. Sounds like a pretty racist state of affairs. Pre hip-hop, the average white person heard the word far, far less.
(*) And honestly, it's patently unclear why that should even matter. How is it "better" for a white person hearing a Black person saying it than it is for a white person to hear a white person say it? Answer: It isn't. It's probably worse.
Exactly -- so the "issue" as postulated really wasn't the "issue."
But that only applies if the white listener knows both the racial identity of the person they're hearing -- there are plenty of white rappers out there -- and knows the "context" and "history." There's no reason to believe either holds. Frankly, there's no reason to believe allowing the term in common currency among dullard white people hasn't made those people more racist -- and future generations will likely conclude that it has.
But since there were no Black people in the audience, that couldn't have been the "issue" in the McNeil kerfuffle. (It could be in certain classrooms, naturally.) And as I've noted, ears of all races hear the word very frequently. So the "offense" or the "issue" couldn't have been being exposed to a bad word.
Repeating, it's only deemed "offensive" if it's uttered by a non-Black person unambiguously identified and identifiable as non-Black. And once we realize that, we realize it isn't the word doing the offending -- it's something else instead -- and we need to recalibrate. At least if we're rational and honest. Many people are not.
And I agree the courts are not interested in "thats not fair" which makes Mcneils comment about racial discrimination seem absurd. here there are courts that deal exclusively with wrongful terminations, is it not the case in the states?
I do not think we are in disagreement on most points here. Perhaps the only one is how a student responds to material that is racist in tone or uses racist language, the current attitude here is to give students a more rounded curriculum of authors but the classics are still taught, Shakespeare etc. The argument that is made here for the inclusion of works that may include passages that may be troubling to the modern student is that it is an opportunity for discussion and understanding of how the historical context has changed over time.
That'd be my perspective. Schools should be about expanding one's horizons, not constraining them, and IMO it's particularly important to give students an historical perspective on how we got to "here" from "there". Which is impossible to do without introducing works that are often "troubling" to our current sensibility.
EDIT: I'd never get a teacher's certification, but I guarantee I could make up a better reading list for any student who seriously wanted to learn how we got from "there" to "here" (in terms of race) than any list used in any school today. And that list would definitely include plenty of openly racist material.
The issue is always how do you tell students from an ethnic minority who faces or has faced systemic discriminations how they have to feel about the use of certain languages or depictions? I do not believe you can
I don't think so, either, but again, that doesn't mean that those students (or their parents) should be given a veto power over the curriculum, which is what some people seem to be saying.
As for the parallel discussion about rap music that I haven't entered, unless some teachers are forcing students to listen to it I can't see why it's relevant even to bring it up. Seems to me that's something between teenagers and their parents. Most rap music seems pretty unintelligible to me, but it'd be kind of hypocritical for someone who grew up loving Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor to complain about any fucking language used by comedians or musicians.
I think two things about this:
1) A lot of anxiety here is created by undue adherence to some idea of "the classics". Books (and art in general) come in and out of fashion all the time, it's really no big deal, and there's really no reason for the Mark Twains of the world to be entitled to a place in the forever canon. One of the great things about humanity is that we produce more than enough good books to fill a school curriculum with really outstanding yet broadly uncontroversial choices.
2) That said, I don't think much of the outcry about any given book usually comes from minorities. In my experience, this is usually the work of the busybody whites, often presuming they know best for the minorities that they see themselves as protecting. It's an oddly colonialist mindset that often has little room or use for actual minority voices.
By and large - again I'm speaking generally here but I think it largely holds - minority frustrations are much more with bigger-picture issues like housing, employment, neighborhood investment, etc. But even the most well-meaning affluent whites are loath to talk about those kinds of issues and much prefer to pretend like they're fighting the good fight with more minor issues like some outdated language in a few books.
I think one thing that you really should understand is how the utter capriciousness of US employment systems exacerbates the concerns about woke mobs and the like.
It does seem like two entirely different systems, here there are several avenues opened to fight these types of termination depending on which legal grounds one wishes to fight it on , the labour board, the human rights commission, the regular courts all being in play depending on how you or your legal team chooses to move forward.
It is in fact easily understood, yes. But it's beside the important point, which is that a white person can't possibly truly be "offended" by hearing the n-word when white people hear the n-word in common currency tens of thousands of times a day and the culture is perfectly fine with them doing so.
I could easily see an argument that we shouldn't let white people hear the word at all, from anyone, anywhere, because they might abuse the privilege -- but that's nothing like the current culture we have. Indeed, I'm hard-pressed to see why the culture is so blasé about white people hearing it so much.
If you're trying not to sound ridiculous, try harder.
It's actually a conservative estimate for white people in aggregate, which is what I meant. That metric is back-of-the-envelope probably over a million a day.
Watch, for example, Menace II Society (I just did, again, about a month ago) and tell me it would be materially more troubling to hear a white person call a Black human being a "...." than it would be for a Black person to do the very same thing. It's a great movie, I've seen it a bunch of times, and that's tough to watch -- and I have no hesitancy saying that it wouldn't really be that much worse if the words were coming out of a white mouth, in the context in which they're used.
We should also note a couple of additional things the movie shows us. First, it absolutely is inaccurate to say the word isn't used aggressively toward Black human beings because it manifestly is used aggressively -- over and over and over again, including in the course of very violent crime.(*) It hasn't really been "repurposed" in any meaningful sense. It was a term of aggression as used by the plantation owners; it's a term of aggression as used by modern day Black users, including the aforementioned hip-hop artists. Not always, obviously, but very frequently. Secondly, it isn't fully accurate to say the word has been fully "repurposed" for a purely Black audience/usage, because if memory serves, one of the characters uses the term to refer to a white guy, to the white guy's face.
There's obviously no realistic way to block white people from seeing or hearing Black people called ".....," but it's also obviously something that should trouble you, and more than just a little. It's a troubling feature of our cultural life. If you google Kyrie Irving, you will see that he is troubled by it, as well.
(*) It also makes rather silly the idea that the word as used by a white person is somehow "offensive" because it's somehow redolent or evocative of slavery. How could a word evoking an institution a century in the rear view mirror (decades if you want to use Jim Crow) be worse than seeing the word used in the contemporary here and now?? Doesn't make a lot of sense when you actually think about it, does it?
Goalposts are racist. (Please turn yourself in now. Comply. We're doing this for the children. Comply. Batteries not included. Comply. Flag pole in center field is in play. Comply. This has been a recording.)
The N-word is a derogatory racial slur!
It will never be...
-a term of endearment
-reclaimed
-flipped
NEVER FORGET ITS FOUL AND TRUE HISTORY!
Throw that N-word out the window, right alongside all of those other racist words used to describe my people.
We are not slaves or N’s
>The fake accusation is that he said something racist.
Boy that must suck.
Oh, they can pretend to be shocked, all right. They can pretend to be shocked about a lot of things, and so can their elders. Pretend shock is almost our national pastime.
I know this comes as a shock to some of you, but honest, it is not. People are portrayed as doing stuff all the time in pop culture that would if done in real life in a normal situation who have consequences. The idea that "It happens all the time in pop culture, therefore I have an open pass to do that thing at work" is so transparently dumb that I am always amused people make that claim.
Hey if you think it is OK to copy words or actions from popular culture at work, and because it is popular culture that makes it fine ... well that is dumb.
Just because someone sings or raps something doesn't make it work appropriate. I mean I would have hoped that would be obvious but it is clear many people on this thread seem to think "but I heard it in a song" is an awesome defense. It is not.
When it comes to the n-word, the various meanings that it's been used for are so historically varied and complicated that Randall Kennedy wrote an entire book about it. Like the m-f word, it can be anything from the fightingest of fighting words to a term of downright endearment.
If I were to call any of you a tabernak, you'd probably do little more than shrug...unless you happened to be an old Expos fan.
As others have noted, the point under discussion re hip hop and the like whooshed way over your head, but even the narrow irrelevancy to which you refer isn't actually true. Pop culture invades the workplace routinely. People listen to the radio at work, including in common areas; big screen TVs are on in common areas routinely in offices; people routinely surf the internet at work. Indeed, given this workplace reality, it's more than a little likely that one or more of the people McNeil allegedly "offended" by mentioning the n-word at work ... had previously heard the n-word at work.
Is the claim here that if you hear a hip hop song at home, the n-word isn't offensive, but if you hear the very same song at work, the n-word then morphs into being offensive? Kind of easy to see how little sense that makes.
Right, but when the context is one Black person aiming it hatefully at another Black person, it's seems way more hateful than when, for instance, a white guy just like quotes Huck Finn or something and doesn't aim anything at anyone. It's the aiming that really makes it hateful.
It's true. Practically every sidewalk I walk down I hear white guys standing around and discussing the literary merits of Huck Finn.
I know it is difficult for you, but try to be less dumb.
The clever reader will note I never used the word offensive. It is not about being offensive. It is about standards of behavior at work. If you are employed you might have clued into the fact that work behavior is different than non-work behavior. What is acceptable in your personal life may not be acceptable to do at work.
If you say something in your personal time, have a good time. However, using that exact verbiage at work can get you fired. Why? Because work is typically (yes, there are exceptions) different. There are different standards.
This is not new. Since there has been work, there have been different standards of behavior when people are at work versus not.
Unless your claim is that work is and should be exactly like personal life, that anything you can do in your personal life should absolutely be OK at work? But that seems too ridiculous even for you.
Ten years ago, I’d have spoken the word “n****r” if reading out loud, if it played a key role in the text, if, say, Countee Cullen’s “Incident” was up for consideration—the “:n-word” alternative seemed infantile.
Today—nope. Events have made clear that the use/mention distinction may obtain in philosophy of language, but not in the contemporary classroom.
I’ve had white students try to persuade me that they had “permission” to say the word—tellling me that they were the kind of white kid a black friend might address as “my nigga.”. I listen, and gently suggest that they might not want to make any assumptions about how far that permission extends….
I agree that voting rights are a crucial fight right now, but it can’t be the only fight—because between the national Democratic Party and the current Supreme Court, it sure looks like it’s gonna be a losing one…..
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