And to quite a few people it WAS offensive that a grown adult said this word to a teen in front of other teens even if it was not directed at anyone. You may feel thats not offensive, but the teens and the teens parents found it offensive, his boss found it offensive, and it got him fired.

It is 100% solely entirely about nothing else except being offensive. That's what potentially makes it unacceptable.

Using a 30-year-old film for your prime example of current wider culture is certainly a take.

Again perhaps you dont find it offensive, but you assume a bunch of teens you do not know saw the movie? you know that they listen to rap and are a-ok with anyone dropping the n bomb in any circumstance?

movies songs etc are not "real life"

Bitter Mouse appears to be ignorance-is-blissfully unaware of people getting fired for "offensive" language/conduct unconnected to the workplace, including the very Teen Vogue situation discussed at length upthread. Nor does he appear at all cognizant of the reality that if he did an Instagram post from his home with the "exaggerated stereotypical Indian accent" he would be liable for pretty much the exact same discipline as if he'd used it at work and it would be no defense to said discipline that he didn't do it at work.

Songs are "real life" in every particular. Movies are mostly real life, though the events depicted don't purport to have happened in real life. Kind of a strange claim.

as I have stated way upthread, anyone in our education department who uttered this word in front of a group of students would be fired on the spots. not sure why this idea seems to fly right over your head ,

its wrong, there is no false claim, he dropped an offensive word during a work place situation and his work fired him. nothing about this is fake.

The teen vogue situation is not remotely similar to Mcniels.

And again you deem it not offensive for other people that you do not know and cannot possibly know how offensive they may or may not have found it.

Your assumption that cannot be offensive because there were no black people present to hear it doesnt pass the laugh test,

The exhibition of My Fair Lady in public is "real life" in literally every particular. The singing of a song is "real life" in literally every particular. Listening to a song is "real life" in every particular. People who see the n-word used in a movie or hear it in a song are doing so in "real life," in every particular.

The "real life" thing is just yet another desperate gambit to try to salvage the untenable. There's nothing to it. Empty calories.

You have not proven that it is "not offensive at all" in the least.

you keep trying to insist these people could not find it offensive but you offer no real reasons beyond "it was in a movie i saw and some rap songs therefore its ok".

it was not directed at an individual and therefore loses all its historical negative connotations when uttered by a non black individual

And to quite a few people it WAS offensive that a grown adult said this word to a teen in front of other teens even if it was not directed at anyone. You may feel thats not offensive, but the teens and the teens parents found it offensive, his boss found it offensive, and it got him fired.

As Mellow has pointed out now 4 times, pop culture , movies songs etc are not "real life" and behaving the way someone acts in a movie at the work place

Twelve years ago, I taught Fences in a baseball-lit course. I have told this story before: one student, an African-American woman, stopped discussion dead in its tracks by saying that a play that contained such language had no place even on stage or in print, let alone in a classroom, and it was completely unacceptable. Nobody had said the word aloud, it was just on the page. But she was for total censorship.

BM and you are being disingenuous by calling this the workplace. Yes, in a hyperliteral sense, he was getting paid to be there, so he was working, and it was a place, and therefore it was a workplace. But it was not an office setting.

And acted in a manner inappropriate to doing his job.

A comedian "on the job" on a stage has different work norms than a lawyer in a courtroom.

He was literally at work. Doing his job. And acted in a manner inappropriate to doing his job. That is hyperliteral in the sense it is 100% correct. I never said office, so great that it was not in an office. Had I said something about being in an office your statement might be relevant.

Once more, because you guys keep ignoring the issue. There are norms when one is at work. Doing a job. In an office or elsewhere. If the person working acts in a way that violates those norms, even if the violation is not offensive, it is often the case that the worker gets fired.

Those norms do change over time. 100 years ago we could've worn blackface and hosted a cakewalk. Today? Not so much.

As someone in the legal profession ( I think) you would have to be able to prove what did and did not offended the teens in question, you assume as the other poster assumes that they listen to rap with the term used a lot , so often that it holds no meaning to them other than how it is used in that context. I do not believe you can prove that in the least, that teens have heard the word and feel immune to it, that they are comfortable with a teacher using it in an educational setting,

yet several of them issued complaints about hearing it, do you think it was because they did not like his articles in the times?

There is no sense in which he "acted in a manner inappropriate to doing his job," whatever that means.

He said something not offensive, some other people fake-claimed "offensiveness."

It was not work appropriate.

But the employer is acting because work norms were being violated.

If at my work place I used an offensive term

quite likely fired cause my work is pretty hard line against using racist language at all at work and everyone who works here understands this.

...never heard that word used to describe Vietnamese food, or the people who prepare it. Unlike the n-word, it was 100% racist and derogatory no matter what the context.

It was work appropriate in every way, and not work-inappropriate in any way.

There was no work norm being violated in the least. Allegedly precipitating fake "I'm offendeds" in a small cohort of people violates no work norm of any kind. The fake offendeds were the ones that violated work norms (as well as ethical norms.)

Do they ban TVs, radios, iPhones, and the internet in your office? If not, then no, they're taking no such hard line.

There is a difference between what an employee at work says and what comes out of a radio or TV.

People on the other end of the radio or TV are perhaps employed by someone, but typically not by the place where the broadcast emanates from.

Really, some people taking offense is a consequence of the norm violation,

There's no difference if what comes out of the radio or the TV comes out of the radio or the TV in the workplace. There's no difference between the fake offendeds hearing the n-word from McNeil or from a guy on TV. Either the word offends on its own accord, or it does not. (Hint: It does not. Again, addressed at length.)

Try sitting in a common area in your workplace and turning porn on your computer. See what happens.

Non-responsive. And dumb. And repetitive. And boring.

Watching porn at home is fine. Watching porn at work is not.

regardless of how often its used in "full metal jacket".

I said watching porn "in the common area." Doesn't matter that the people on the screen aren't employees. Just like it wouldn't matter if the n-word came from a non-employee. The distinction between employee and non-employee is therefore irrelevant, just like "workplace," "real life" and all the other failed distinguishing gambits.

Watching porn in a common area is one such. And maybe you work at some interesting places, but I assure you getting caught watching porn by your manager in your cube will also get you fired from many jobs. So it is not just common areas.

Will playing hip-hop? Any effort to prevent employees from playing or listening to hip-hop? No, right? In fact, you see office parties, holiday parties, etc. where it's affirmatively played. See the difference? Porn, no. N-word to employee ears, even in its aggressive, targeted form -- no worries. There are in fact no workplace efforts whatsoever to prevent the n-word from hitting employee ears, either within or outside the workplace. There is a widespread effort to prevent porn from hitting employee eyes in the workplace, so much so that you might even call it a "norm."

First note: If you think playing any music so others can hear it is OK at every single workplace then your ignorance is laughable.

Companies establish explicit and implicit workplace norms for a variety of reasons, most of which are not about protecting eyes, ears, or delicate sensibilities.

Yes, exactly -- which is why it was so craven to cave to the fake offended for the fake reason that their ears needed protecting.

The fact that there is a norm in many workplaces

There is no norm. It's pointless at this juncture to hop back on the same hamster wheel. The fact that there is no norm makes the premise fail and therefore everything that follows from that premise fails.

Back to "norms that I don't like can't exist, because I don't like them".

No, back to "norms that don't exist, don't exist."

Right, but when the context is one Black person aiming it hatefully at another Black person,

He was literally at work. Doing his job. And acted in a manner inappropriate to doing his job. That is hyperliteral in the sense it is 100% correct. I never said office, so great that it was not in an office. Had I said something about being in an office your statement might be relevant.

Once more, because you guys keep ignoring the issue. There are norms when one is at work. Doing a job. In an office or elsewhere. If the person working acts in a way that violates those norms, even if the violation is not offensive, it is often the case that the worker gets fired.

This idea that it wasn't Morris workplace . . . I think people must be talking about two different things because it's so clearly obvious he was working, in the place he usually works, talking to the public, and he needs to represent his employer with an appropriate level of decorum. We can disagree on where that level is, of course. But arguing if Morris was "in the workplace?" seems like a painfully weak attempt to shift goalposts.

Wait, what word is that? The most commonly used slur against Vietnamese (and Asians in general) BITD was "gook", but I've never heard that word used to describe Vietnamese food, or the people who prepare it. Unlike the n-word, it was 100% racist and derogatory no matter what the context.

The fact that there is a norm in many workplaces against ... to go back to the Jack Morris example ... putting on an accent when talking about a person of a different nationality or group seems to make you sad and angry. I can't help that.

Once more, no. All you are doing is stating platitudes: people get fired for doing things that employers don't want them to do. Duh. I mean, that's essentially a tautology. It is a substance free description of what happened.

You folks are getting all worked up about the most normal thing in the world - people getting fired for doing stuff their bosses really don't like - and then when some of us point that fact out you get all huffy and "Well that is obvious!"

Rapes and murders happen all the time. Pointing that fact out in response to someone lamenting a particular rape or murder adds precisely zero to the conversation.

There is a tiny little itty bitty difference between a crime like rape or murder and a business firing someone. Though it is amusing seeing a Libertarian equate a company firing someone to a crime. Corporations exercising their rights to fire at-will employees is normally something Libertarians suggest is a normal and even good activity as part of the most loved free market, unlike law-breaking.

I find it interesting how often discussions like these go quickly to the dynamic of firing somebody

If you really wanted to add something of substance instead of simply trying to imitate how clever people talk, you might try to explain how you feel about at-will employment, not normally known as something that progressives are eager to defend. But I guess it's all good as long as the occasional high-profile "racist" gets caught in the net?

What does my opinion of at-will employment have to do with the topic.

I mean we can discuss rearranging the foundations of our economy, but I won't start with at-will employment. I think there are strong reasons to support at-will employment. I mean I also support unions, making them easier to form, for example, but I am not against at-will employment. I am a consultant, all my work is at-will and has been for many years.

Because very few people in these discussions understand what it's like to be racially discriminated against, but everyone understands being worried about their job.

And of course, even at-will employees can't just be fired by boss's whim; e.g., if the boss doesn't like the fact that you're Black

If you're a consultant, aren't you contracted? That's the exact opposite of what "at-will employment" is.

Hence all the bluster I've quoted, as you scramble desperately to hide that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, and so take both sides of the issue and end up betraying your ignorance anyway in a misguided attempt to show your bonafides.

You clearly haven't made the obvious connection everyone else has quickly made: unless employment was at-will, the norm-that-isn't-a-norm that you postulated -- that if you do something the boss doesn't like you could be fired -- wouldn't be the case.(*) The non-norm that you confused with a norm can only exist where employment is at-will.

As many as 34% of all U.S. employees apparently enjoy the protection of some kind of "just cause" or objectively reasonable requirement for termination that takes them out of the pure "at-will" category, including the 7.5% of unionized private-sector workers, the 0.8% of nonunion private-sector workers protected by union contracts, the 15% of nonunion private-sector workers with individual express contracts that override the at-will doctrine, and the 16% of the total workforce who enjoy civil service protections as public-sector employees.

My contract is at will. It lasts for a year, but at any time and for any reason, they can terminate it.

I love this paragraph.

Then it's either not a contract, or not at will. And you're not an employee anyway.

There is a tiny little itty bitty difference between a crime like rape or murder and a business firing someone.

Then it's either not a contract, or not at will. And you're not an employee anyway.

It is a contract.

He's not an employee and he's not an at-will employee.

If he doesn't have the chops to be able to negotiate any actual contractual obligation from his counterparties, that's his issue.

He apparently has zero firsthand experience as an employee dealing with the "work norms" he's been flailingly pontificating about.

Currently no.

And in fact, they do have a contractual obligation, it is to pay me my rate for hours worked.

Exactly. So what have you been arguing about then?

so the contract really doesn't gain you anything

Other than money every month? Because, and you may not understand this, without a contract, I won't get paid.

Then how do I not have a contract and still get paid? Millions of Americans don't have contracts and still get paid for their work. Honest.

Because, and you may not understand this, without a contract, I won't get paid.

... makes no sense. Like literally zero. You have a contract, or so you say, that says you will get paid X for Y work. I don't have a contract, yet I still dependably get paid X for Y work

It is almost as if different employment situations were different. Some people have contracts and others do not. Where I work as a consultant I have to have a contract.

No, you like definitively don't have to have a contract to get paid. That's why and how all of us who work without contracts get paid.