Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

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Gob
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Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Gob »

Secondary schools are being sent an open letter urging teachers not to read out a racist term in full that appears in curriculum texts.

It follows reports pupils at two Teesside schools challenged the use of the slur during lessons on Of Mice and Men, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

The letter has been signed by more than 100 academics, campaigners and parents.

The Department for Education said any concerns should be dealt with by the schools' complaints procedures.

Neither of the schools are being named to protect the identity of the pupils involved.

The open letter, organised by anti-racist educator Marsha Garratt, asks all the schools in the Tees Valley area to stop teachers reading the racist slur out loud.

She said two young people of African heritage told her about the separate incidents and how they challenged the teachers, saying the word was racist.

'Violent word'

"In both cases the teachers said it wasn't racist because they were using it from a text and because of the situation", Ms Garratt said.

"The teachers continued to use the word in their defence of using that word, which just exacerbated things massively.

"Me and fellow campaigners are saying this word is a violent word and it adds nothing to the lesson by saying it out loud.

"We're not targeting particular schools, we're asking all schools not to say the word out loud in a lesson.

"There are three reasons why - it affects the students' sense of safety, it doesn't add to the value of the lesson, and some of our students have reported that some white students felt emboldened to repeat the term afterwards, causing more harm."

The open letter asks every school to respond to the request.

'Sensitive issues'

The Department for Education spokesperson said: "Pupils should be taught about different communities and how different groups of people have contributed to society.

"We have given schools the freedom and flexibility to decide how to do that, and choose their own resources for the national curriculum.

"Any sensitive issues regarding the materials should be handled by the school and in consultation with parents.

"If there are concerns with books and how they are taught, as with other schooling matters, people should follow the school's complaints procedure in place."
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Scooter
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Scooter »

There is certainly an argument to be made that students should not have to hear that particular word said aloud in class, particular when it has been shown that other students have been emboldened to use it in other contexts as a slur against Black students. Teachers should have enough creativity to address its use in the book without needing to say it aloud in class.
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Gob
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Gob »

"This motherfucker calls me up in the middle of the night. It was one o’clock in the morning and he goes, “Dad, don’t be mad […] I’m at a party and my designated driver had too much to drink. Me and friends need you to come pick us up.” I said, “Jesus Christ, it’s one o’clock in the morning. Nigga, I am shit-faced!” But I figured, fuck, it’s better me than some kid […] I said, “Alright, I’m coming to get you. Give me the address and I’ll be right there.” And then he gave me the address and I was shocked. I said, “Son, you’re not gonna believe this but — I’m at the same party, nigga!”"
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Big RR »

Was that Lenny in Of Mice and Men, or was it from To Kill a Mockingbird?

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Gob
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Gob »

It was Dave Chappelle. Hearing the word in school, where the context and offensiveness can be discussed as part of education, isn't the only place kids may hear the word. Also, by making it such an ultimate taboo means kids are MORE likely to use it, rather than less.



(Dead, ayy, ayy ayy ayy)
All day, nigga
How long you niggas ball? All day, nigga
How much time you spent at the mall? All day, nigga
How many runners do you got on call? All day, nigga
Swish, swish, how long they keep you in court? All day, nigga
Take you to get this fly? All day, nigga
Tell your P.O. how-how long you been high? All day, nigga
You already know I'm straight from the Chi, all day, nigga
South, south, south side! All day, nigga
This Ye, nigga
Shoppin' for the winter, and it's just May, nigga
Ball so hard, man, this shit cray, nigga
And you ain't gettin' money 'less you got eight figures
For that Jesus piece, man, I've been saved, nigga
Just talked to Farrakhan, that's sensei, nigga
Told him I've been on ten since the 10th grade, nigga
Got a middle finger longer than Dikembe, my nigga, uh
I don't let 'em play with me
I don't let 'em talk to me no kind of way
Uh, they better watch what they say to me
Niggas still gettin' popped on the day to day
Yeah, I still got the hundred with the small face, nigga
Might spend 50 racks on my off day, nigga
You a fake Denzel like the Allstate nigga
If you run into me, better have Allstate with yah
You a Rico Suave nigga
Ride 'round listen to Sade, nigga
If you ain't with us, you in our way, nigga
You an actor, you should be on Broadway, nigga
Cause you do shit the broad way, nigga
Your bitch got a ass, but my broad way thicker
Late for the class, in the hallway, nigga
Yeah, the dropout at it as always, nigga, as always
All day, nigga
I took a young sweet breath, and I reached into my head
Gave him what I had left
At that moment I dispersed
At that moment I dispersed
All day, nigga
How-h-how long you ball? All day, nigga
How much time you spent at the mall? All day, nigga
How long it take you to get this fly? All day, nigga
Tell your P.O. how-how long you been high? All day, nigga
Pour some Hen out for my niggas that died, all day, nigga
And I keep a bad bitch on the passenger side, all day, nigga
You already know that I'm straight from the Chi, all day, nigga
South, south, south side! All day, nigga
I could do this all day, boy, I'm finna turn this bitch out
They need that Ye in the streets, boy, there's been a motherfucking drought
Don't really matter what I make, boy, you know I still go wild
Like a light skinned slave, boy, we in the mothafuckin' house
Right now, you lookin' real sus right now
I swear I've been on this flight like a month right now
Stupid niggas gettin' money, Forrest Gump right now
Shout-out to Jackie Chan, I need to stunt right now
They've been lookin' at the Gram, I've been lookin' at the Grammys
Like, huh, that's us right now
24/7, 365 days, everybody gettin' paid
Niggas lookin' at me like I'm worth both MJs
People saying, "Ye, Ye, take it easy"
20 Gs for the Yeezys off of eBay
Niggas do the most and they ain't done shit
Only way I can sum it up, son bitch
Some want you dead, ayy, ayy ayy ayy
All day, nigga
I took a young sweet breath, and I reached into my head
Gave him what I had left
At that moment I dispersed
At that moment I dispersed
Get low, alright
Get low, alright
What up? Alright, alright
Stay low, alright
Stay low, alright
South, south, south side, all day nigga
Whistling
Well, well, well
Let me run (Let me run)
Let me run to see who came undone
You've been right in my face
Let me run 'til you're off my case
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Scooter
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Scooter »

I'm not going to get into the weeds of when and why Black people use the word, because that is a completely different discussion. It is absolutely not necessary for students to hear a teacher speak the word in order to have a discussion about it, particularly when they are already seeing it in print. And it would greatly complicate attempts to police and discipline students for using it as a slur, when they can point to their teacher having used it in class.
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Big RR
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Big RR »

And it would greatly complicate attempts to police and discipline students for using it as a slur, when they can point to their teacher having used it in class.
And what, the school would be powerless to enforce its rules because of this? Come on. I agree the use of the word in class might be a problem depending on the age of the kids, but I don't think it would affect make student think they had some dispensation to any use of the word outside of the classroom discussions.

When I was in Sunday school we routinely heard the words damn(ed) hell, and ass, even cock (as in the the cock crowed three times), but this did not give us any carte blanche to use those terms in or out of the classroom except in connection with particular discussions. We all knew it, and, more importantly, those in charge knew it.

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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Bicycle Bill »

Trying to have a conversation about the word 'nigger' without at least referring to it as a part of the discussion is like trying to explain a platypus to someone without being able to show them a picture of one.

And ditto to what Big RR said about it being OK or acceptable to use the word in any and all circumstances because "teacher used it".   Hell, I remember back when I was eleven or twelve, reading a story of WW-II submarine warfare in which the submariners referred to the enemy as "bastards", but I still knew that it wasn't a word that was able to tossed into general conversation merely because I'd read it in a book somewhere (of course, this was back in the slightly more civil, strait-laced times of the middle/late 1960s, when people would still try to 'watch their language' under most circumstances... 'company manners', we used to call it).

And don't say that they can always pussy-foot around it by using the euphemism, the 'N'-word, rather than the word itself.  That's a cop-out ... and remember too that there's at least one other word starting with 'N' that one is also on the 'Never Supposed to Use' list.
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Last edited by Bicycle Bill on Mon Oct 11, 2021 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by BoSoxGal »

When the word is printed out in the literary text under consideration, and the instructor uses ‘N-word’ to reference it, I think even the short bus kids can figure that out.

There is a world of difference between black folks calling each other ‘nigga’ and white folks calling blacks niggers. Anybody who is still arguing that point in 2021 is being totally disingenuous.
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Bicycle Bill »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 7:48 pm
There is a world of difference between black folks calling each other ‘nigga’ and white folks calling blacks niggers. Anybody who is still arguing that point in 2021 is being totally disingenuous.
That's like saying that it's OK for YOU to call yourself a cunt or a bitch or a ho', but I dassn't dare.
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Econoline »

So... could the teacher have simply said the word "nigga" instead?

Also: if a Black teacher (funny how everyone automatically assumes any teacher in this situation is white) is the one teaching a lesson on Of Mice and Men, or To Kill a Mockingbird, or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn... does he or she get special dispensation to read aloud the word as it was written?
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by BoSoxGal »

I did not assume the teacher was any particular race, I am speaking of the context for the word nigger being used - in To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, etc. No, you can’t replace nigger with nigga in such context and you are being entirely disingenuous in suggesting so, as I suspect you’re fully aware. Just another thread like so many in the last year or more where the well past middle aged white men on this board reveal their true colors.
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Bicycle Bill »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:04 pm
I did not assume the teacher was any particular race, I am speaking of the context for the word nigger being used - in To Kill a Mockingbird, Huckleberry Finn, Of Mice and Men, etc. No, you can’t replace nigger with nigga in such context and you are being entirely disingenuous in suggesting so, as I suspect you’re fully aware. Just another thread like so many in the last year or more where the well past middle aged white men on this board reveal their true colors.
BSG, black people in America have their own language constructions, speech patterns, and certain phonic groups that are different from normal — or 'White' — English (I might as well push the bias button, since you're going to accuse me — along with every other swinging dick on this board — of being a white male racist yet again anyway...).   Remember when they tried to pass it off as "Ebonics"?

I don't believe it is possible for a black person in America to pronounce the word 'nigger' EXCEPT as 'nigga' — or any other word ending in 'er', like 'player' ('playa') or 'brother' ('brutha'), just like it seems to be impossible for them to 'ASK you a question'; they always gotta 'AKS' you sumthin'.
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Econoline »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:04 pm
the well past middle aged white men on this board reveal their true colors.
And yet I didn't actually write out the word but you did. :nana :fu
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Joe Guy »

Bicycle Bill wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:29 pm
I don't believe it is possible for a black person in America to pronounce the word 'nigger' EXCEPT as 'nigga' — or any other word ending in 'er', like 'player' ('playa') or 'brother' ('brutha'), just like it seems to be impossible for them to 'ASK you a question'; they always gotta 'AKS' you sumthin'.
:D

But seriously, I see the word "nigga" as a synonym for a "dude" (used instead of 'guy') but it's only acceptable to use around black people if you are black. Also, being raised among many Italians, I often heard them using the word "dago". It was an acceptable word as long as the person who said it was Italian.

In regards to the thread topic, I think society has reached a stage in which using or even quoting a word like 'nigger' and quite a few other words (Chink, Spic, etc) is no longer tolerable, even though it never should have been. Although it does seem that the words, "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "cocksucker", "motherfucker", and "tits" are commonly used nowadays and it doesn't matter if older people are offended by those words.

My personal opinion is that the trend to find something to be offended by is no longer a trend, it's an established practice of the majority of people (at least the many people I've seen who express themselves on the internet and other media). Also (my personal opinion, of course) parents, whether they realize it or not, are raising their children to recognize opportunities to become victims, video-record it and make it available to the entire world on the internet - with the goal of "going viral".

My final personal opinion is that a helluva lotta men sound gay when they speak nowadays. The world has gone to hell in a gay handbasket!... :mrgreen:

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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by BoSoxGal »

Econoline wrote:
Tue Oct 12, 2021 12:12 am
BoSoxGal wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:04 pm
the well past middle aged white men on this board reveal their true colors.
And yet I didn't actually write out the word but you did. :nana :fu
Context and audience is everything - I hardly think your choice to not write out the word nigger in our conversation among so-called adults outweighs the lack of seriousness you display for the topic by suggesting that it would be okay for teachers in secondary schools to use nigga instead.

This WashPo opinion piece captures my feelings on the subject pretty close to entirely. Context is everything. Audience is everything. Intent is everything.

Suggestions to the contrary are entirely disingenuous.
Perspective
The case for quoting the n-word in university classrooms
If the slur is mentioned in key court decisions, it should not be taboo in law schools.

By Randall Kennedy and Eugene Volokh
May 13, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

Should certain people be forbidden to voice (or even write) certain words in university classrooms? Rutgers Law School is in an uproar because a White student asked a question about legal culpability — and quoted a racial slur in the process. In a Zoom meeting with a professor and other students, the student brought up a 1993 New Jersey Supreme Court case about a conflict that ended with murder, in which a defendant (who did not pull the trigger) had shouted, “I’m going back to Trenton to get my niggers.” After accounts of the Zoom exchange spread, students demanded that the school ban the mention of slurs even when discussing cases.

That’s not the only such case. This spring, students at Columbia University filed a formal complaint against an adjunct professor, the general counsel of Human Rights Watch, after she mentioned the same racial slur several times in a classroom anecdote while recalling a deposition conducted by a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, who liberally used the word as part of a ploy to get a member of the Ku Klux Klan to open up. (Human Rights Watch subsequently fired her.)

In 2019, the New School investigated a creative writing professor after students complained that she had used the racial slur when discussing the bowdlerized title of the James Baldwin documentary “I Am Not Your Negro.” Baldwin himself did not say “Negro”; the professor quoted him accurately. She was cleared of creating a discriminatory classroom environment, but others have not been so lucky: A tenured professor at Central Michigan University was fired for repeating the slur as he read from a court opinion that was all about how First Amendment law treats that epithet.

We believe that the campaign to make certain words taboo — literally unsayable — dangerously encroaches on academic freedom and freedom of expression. It also diminishes the opportunity for students to learn lessons useful to their future professional careers and to their roles as citizens. (That is true both of racial slurs and of other slurs.) Any word emerging in court proceedings should be repeatable in a law school classroom. As for other university departments, any word that appears in a historical document, novel, film or song should be mentionable for the purpose of study.

One of us mainly teaches First Amendment law at a public university, the University of California at Los Angeles. The other mainly teaches race relations law at a private university, Harvard. One of us is White; the other Black. One of us leans conservative-libertarian; the other left-liberal. But we agree on the importance of exploring fully and unflinchingly even disturbing subjects in class. Neither of us “uses” any slurs as insults, the sense in which these words are rightly repudiated. But we do vocalize such terms in reading quotations or posing hypotheticals to reinforce the legal system’s norm of accurately quoting source material, and to convey important lessons, including the ways in which epithets have been an integral part of the soundtrack of American prejudice.

Professors we admire have made a different choice, opting to avoid ever articulating the most notorious racial slur. They maintain that mentioning the epithet is so hurtful to some that no pedagogical aim can justify such pain and distraction. We respect their decision, though we disagree with it. We ask that a reciprocal respect be paid to the decisions that we urge.

Slurs are key, complicated, volatile and potentially revealing words in the American lexicon that are often directly pertinent to subjects that professors routinely teach. A class on one of the most infamous murder trials of the late 20th century — the O.J. Simpson case — will be impoverished to the extent that it skirts grappling fully with the epithet that a prosecutor there called the “filthiest, dirtiest, nastiest word in the English language.” (It emerged in court that a detective in the investigation had frequently used the epithet.)

Likewise for classes on the fighting words doctrine, group defamation, or what is called hate speech, where the word is often the very subject of the case. And the same principle should apply for other slurs. (The Central Michigan University professor who was fired was also condemned by the university for quoting the sign “God Hates Fags,” which members of the Westboro Baptist Church have brandished outside military funerals. In an important 2011 case obviously worthy of classroom discussion, the Supreme Court ruled that was constitutionally protected speech.)

We also read these slurs aloud because we believe that commitment to candor and accuracy is an important norm of our legal system. Judges routinely quote epithets, without euphemism or expurgation, in their published opinions. For a recent law journal article on this topic, we found “nigger” quoted in more than 9,500 opinions written since 2000 by jurists as varied as Sandra Day O’Connor, Sonia Sotomayor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Clarence Thomas (plus thousands of lower court judges). All of these judges could have expurgated the terms — as some other judges do — but they chose not to, for the sake of reporting the facts as they actually happened. Law students need to be trained to operate in a professional world in which this is a norm.

What about the complaints from those who say that hearing or even reading the most offensive slurs, no matter the context, interferes with their ability to learn? First, feelings of hurt are not unchangeable givens untouched and untouchable by the ways in which institutions respond to them. The more that schools validate the idea that such hurt is justified, the more that emotion will be embraced, and the more there will be calls to broaden and harden linguistic taboos. (There are already signs the prohibition is expanding: At the University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall Law School this academic year, students called for a professor to be disciplined after he included on a test a question about employment discrimination that featured a redacted version of “n-----,” as well as “b----,” noting that the terms represented “profane expressions for African Americans and women.” A dean called the language in the question “deeply offensive.”) We want to push in another direction, advancing the message that educated people, particularly lawyers, should be able to deal calmly with any word.

Second, complaints of distress cannot suffice to bar teachers from teaching about the facts, whether related to specific words, or to upsetting subjects, such as rape, genocide or slavery. That is especially so when teachers are training students to become professionals who must often deal with awful facets of human nature. Lawyers rendered incapable of concentrating merely by encountering quotes containing slurs are lawyers of diminished value to their clients.

There’s a final point. All of the recent controversies over mentions of the most controversial racial slur in classrooms have involved speakers who are White. Those calling for apologies and punishments often expressly demand an asymmetrical rule that Black speakers are given leeway, while non-Black speakers are held to a rigid, strictly enforced injunction. We oppose such discrimination. The one of us who is Black and has had racial slurs hurled at him on numerous occasions rejects the dubious racial privilege that this rule would offer. The other of us who is White rejects the intellectual disablement that this rule would entail.

Prohibiting some teachers, on the basis of racial identity, from saying a word that others are permitted to say violates anti-discrimination laws, and it certainly violates sound academic practice. It is of a piece with other balkanizations of intellectual and artistic life that threaten what should be an open, pluralistic culture that encourages everyone to confront frankly difficult facts.

We are well aware that racism is a powerful force in American life that appears in many guises, some lethal. We believe that opposing racism is imperative, and that vigilance is essential. We also believe, however, that developing a capacity for making important distinctions is a valuable skill and a fundamental goal of education. That is why we insist on recognizing the gulf that separates using slurs as insults from quoting or mentioning them as part of an educational venture.
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Econoline
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Econoline »

Like most people here, sometimes I'm serious and sometimes I'm not (and sometimes I'm even sarcastic! :-o ).

What can I say except
Context is everything. Audience is everything. Intent is everything.





P.S. The WaPo piece still leaves it unclear whether quoting the word is ever permissible outside of a courtroom or a graduate-level law course, and whether the context can ever include a classroom discussion (even at the university level) of an important work of literature.
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Gob »

Big RR wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 5:39 pm

And what, the school would be powerless to enforce its rules because of this? Come on. I agree the use of the word in class might be a problem depending on the age of the kids, but I don't think it would affect make student think they had some dispensation to any use of the word outside of the classroom discussions.
Agreed, the school already, one presumes, forbids the use of the word. And if the schools do not educate the kids about the word and the use and abuse of it, who does?
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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by Gob »

Bicycle Bill wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:29 pm

BSG, black people in America have their own language constructions, speech patterns, and certain phonic groups that are different from normal — or 'White' — English (I might as well push the bias button, since you're going to accuse me — along with every other swinging dick on this board — of being a white male racist yet again anyway...).   Remember when they tried to pass it off as "Ebonics"?
As I've said here so many times, no race has the right to sequester words and language, that's plain racism.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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Re: Let's pretend it doesn't exist.

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

When I was about seven, I had a year in school in Glasgow (Scotland). I probably had a mile or so to walk to school. Unthinkable nowadays and maybe it wasn't that far (seemed like a long way) and bigger kids would stop you and ask: "Are you a Mick or a Prod?" - Mick = Catholic, Prod = Protestant. Glasgow was at least on some level segregated: even the football (soccer) teams catered to Catholics (Glasgow Celtic) or Protestants* (Rangers). You had to know what neighbourhood you were in to avoid being hit. I was never beaten up but I did have pain a time or two. I suppose eventually I did learn what route to take home in order to avoid the rough kids.

I was taught 'sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.' I'm not saying name calling is OK; but to go all wobbly because someone mentions a word which was once used hatefully seems a little precious to me.

* The Rangers signed their first Catholic player in 1989. 1989!!!!! The club was formed in 1872.

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