So in Korean, the word for "you" is 니가 (pronounced "nee-gah"). Example usage: 니가 언제 먹었어요? (When did you eat? "Nee-gah un-jeh mug-uss-uh-yo") I can't help but wonder if the use of this word would also elicit a similar reaction...
EDIT: I briefly forgot this, but there is a similar Korean word "내가" which is "me" or "I", and pronounced "ne-gah". Example usage: 내가 이 밥을 먹었어요. (I ate this food. "Ne-ga ee bap-uhl mug-uss-uh-yo")
EDIT2: Korean is not my native language so forgive me for this, but "you" is usually just 니 ("nee"), and "me" or "I" is just 내 ("ne"), but the 가 ("gah") part is used like a conjunction to connect to the rest of the phrase.
EDIT3: Ok, so I talked with a better Korean speaker about this and 니가 "nee-ga" is sort of a regional dialect (kind of like a slang term) for 너가 "nuh-ga". 니가 "nee-ga" is more commonly used in southern parts of South Korea, as the proper way of saying/spelling "you" is 너가 "nuh-ga". My Korean is influenced with the southern regional dialect as my parents were from that region. Sorry for the possible confusion. (So just "you" is 너 "nuh".)
Here's a fight(more like an assault on the elderly) that broke out between a black American on a South Korean bus because the elderly people, who probably don't speak a word of English or know English racial slurs, referred to him as "you" in their own language in their own country: https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/88xlz4/a_bl...
Probably not. The difference in vowel sounds, timing and intonation don't give it the same feel. It's pretty noticable when you hear Mandarin spoken because the word is usually spoken pretty quickly then the speaker trails off because they're thinking of what to say... Sometimes they say it two or three times on a row. So it really stands out.
I know nothing about the language being discussed here, but the answer is no, it doesn't lead to misunderstandings. How do I know this? Because it's a natural language. The language exists for no reason other than the fact that it works. If the words sounded exactly the same you could safely assume that they either communicate the difference some other way, or the difference simply does not matter to them.
An example of communicating something in a different way would be how in Spanish the pronoun is completely dropped in most cases. This is because it's completely redundant as the verb will be conjugated to include the pronoun.
An example of things not mattering is in English where we don't distinguish between rivers that flow into other rivers and rivers that flow into the sea. French speakers might be confused (how do you know whether it's a fleuve or a rivière?), but the answer is we simply don't care.
When learning a natural language, always assume that it works for them. Your aim is not to be able to translate your language to theirs, it is to be able to communicate your thoughts into their minds. Keep an open mind about what's important to transfer and how this can happen.
In Korean, the vowels ㅣ (ee sound) and ㅐ (eh sound) are different in the written language. There are actually more difficult things such as ㅐ and ㅔ (both "eh" sound) which can get confusing when trying to spell Korean words. In practice, I personally don't get confused differentiating between "nee-gah" and "ne-gah", but that may have been due to me having Korean parents and being used to that terminology since birth.
Just from watching that lecture - he seems like a genuinely good professor. He provided tons of context before he introduced that example, and it's a real-world example from a language that nearly a billion humans speak. By choosing an example that is from a language that is foreign to most of his students - he's helping his students understand that the actual concept he's teaching is not just an english linguistic feature or a western-centric mannerism - it's a communication pattern that occurs widely.
I feel bad for the future UCS students who will miss out on his class. I also wonder to what degree this decision will have a chilling effect on the content of other lecturers at UCS. Could history professors see this as a reason to exclude primary content that reflects the racist realities of the past? Or maybe music professors will reconsider whether they can teach the work of artists who might be cultural appropriation? It's hard to say.
I hope that another university makes this professor a job offer - or at least speaks out in support of his teaching. This seems so bizarre that I can only reckon with it by imagining it's a west-coast cultural phenomenon. I certainly wouldn't imagine this going down the same way in my home state (North Carolina) - but maybe I'm underestimating how pervasive this extreme sensitivity trend really is. There WAS an incident with a professor who got suspended at NC State recently ( https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article235... ) but in that case - the professor was publicly mocking his students in a way that may or may not have been interpreted as sexist. Even if the suspension for that scenario actually overkill (which I think it was) - it seems crazy pants to put the professor who was thoughtfully teaching a lecture in the same category as one who gets a kick out of insulting students for laughs.
Again, context is everything. What an utterly spineless, pathetic response from a risk averse management type - to throw their colleague under the bus.
Exactly. Otherwise it is nothing more than a politically correct reaction to everything that moves in the direction of what they think is 'offensive'. Even if it unintentionally "sounds" like it.
For the professor there is no 'Please, I can explain...' and there is no redemption. Instantly found guilty. This is the clownworld order folks.
I did some Chinese courses last year and "na ge" is something that will get repeated frequently because of how Chinese make their sentences. There is another one "nei ge". They are an important part of the Chinese language.
Edit: just watched the video. He was not teaching a chinese course. A bit of a suspicious example he picked if you ask me.
On the other hand, if you're an African American doing a business deal in China, it is also almost certainly the best example, and might genuinely be the most valuable thing that you take away from that class. Specifically, "sometimes people speaking Mandarin say something that sounds like 'ni__er'. It is not actually 'ni__er', and is completely unrelated to my race."
That could easily be the difference between "deal" and "end of relationship".
> "...utterly spineless, pathetic response from a risk averse management type..."
the same thing happens with the corona responses of universities. colleges could open with distancing rules, sensible mask usage (inside, not outside), testing, and swift quarantine. that would basically eliminate spread in the learning environment.
the problem, of course, is outside the learning environment, where students will inevitably let their guards down and mix unsafely, but that's not the purview of the university. these are (young) adults, and the university's responsibilities end at the campus edge. what the university can do is refuse access to the infected on campus (in conjunction with plentiful testing), and provide swift and compassionate support for students who do get infected (and can't come on campus), without overstepping into paternalism.
then the responsible students will have access to the education they desire (and paid for), while the irresponsible will be denied (temporarily, likely having to repeat a semester or even a year). this will incentivize good behavior without resorting to autocratic mismanagement like this.
> "Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students. We must and we will do better."
It's unbelievable that this "understandably" caused pain to anyone. There is a linked recording of him using the term. Not only does this barely resemble the racial slur, it is indistinguishably used in a context where it's implicitly clear and even explicitly stated that it's a term from another language.
The dean and faculty should stand behind the professor and educate whoever got upset about this that you can not expect punishment for obvious misunderstandings.
Also, it might be really helpful to add (nà ge) to the title as it's impossible to make out the essence of the article for anyone who doesn't know the logographics.
I think that microaggressions are real, that language really has import, and I've been noticing those kinds of things more and more on a daily basis. But this is entirely unwarranted and a gross overreaction.
Having said that, I also understand the terror that this kind of issue generates in organisations. Imagine you're the dean of an institution in an environment where people only read the headlines in their Facebook news feeds. I can easily imagine the headline "Marshall School of Business refuses to discipline lecturer who repeatedly said the n-word in class" followed by a dissembling write-up of angry students and vague mentions of the fact it wasn't intentional. This kind of thing can turn into a reputational firestorm and do real long-term damage to student recruitment.
Deans of educational institutions are between a rock and a hard place. If they were in charge of the narrative, it would be possible to be reasonable and say "This wasn't something to be upset about, and here's why". But they rarely are in charge of the narrative and want to shut these issues down as quickly as possible.
I can imagine a reasonable way forward might be to get the students and lecturer together to talk over the issues, and have a nuanced discussion about differing languages, much like what's happening in some of the comments here. But by the time you've organised that the firestorm is well underway and the damage is already done.
This seems like a perfect example of why micro-aggressions are bullshit. Any right-thinking person can see that those taking offence to this are wrong, while the theory of micro-aggressions posits that because they are offended their feelings are valid and the professor must be in the wrong.
But that kind of controversy is supposed to be a good thing for universities! I'm not saying you're wrong as a matter of organizational dynamics, but it reads to me like an explanation of why a liquor store owner might prefer to only sell soft drinks. What's the point of a university where ideas can't be freely discussed?
If they are really worried about such headlines, I can tell you the next escalation level: geography lecturer dismissed because of using an N word (northpol)
> this "excuse letter" looks exactly like what a victim of a sham trial would write
As far as I see the letter behind the link was written by the "judge" in this "trial": "Geoff Garrett,
Dean" -- it's he who wrote:
"Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students."
This is hardly surprising. We used to have lots of civil social discourse. Media, elites, and intellectuals would engage in such discourse and would present sometimes opposing thoughts. Only with such discourse will there be no room for radicals. And look what's been happening, moderates of a few years ago would be considered far-right today. Anyone with different opinions, now matter what reasons they offer, will be labeled with the usual: bigot, racist, fascist, and xenophobia. Media like WaPo and NYT and CNN published all kinds of articles that argue XXX is racism, like milk, like maths, like interior design.
I think you're making your own counterargument: if you prioritize civil discourse, you necessarily exclude radicals - you've limited the space of discourse by insisting that the only acceptable propositions are those that people can reliably be civil about. Fewer people were making extreme claims, but many of those extreme claims could have been debated rationally, were people interested in doing so. It is a Potemkin discourse: it looks very peaceful and respectable, but it looks that way because it's artificially removed from actually discussing the state of our society.
So, I am happy to engage you in debate, and I'll even do your job for you by trying to precisely name the propositions that you think are so obviously incorrect.
Most of the hits I see for "milk is racist" is about the alt-right using milk drinking as essentially an aesthetic symbol, which seems like a) a factual observation b) not a claim about milk itself being racist, but about its adoption as a racist symbol.
I see a 2016 CNN article called "math is racist," which, if you read it, is clearly arguing that mathematical models are being used in ways that reinforce racism, not that the brute facts of mathematics are themselves racist, either. This argument is generally widely accepted, so I'm curious if you disagree with it.
I can't find any articles about interior design being racist, but I do see articles about the interior design industry confronting race problems. This doesn't sound surprising or extreme either - I'd expect that most industries have race problems of some sort.
You'll note that I have not called you bigot, racist, fascist, nor xenophobia [sic], and I'd appreciate if you returned the favor and engaged my arguments on the merits.
There's a common strain of thought in the US that it's actually a sign of maturity to be pained and upset by words. Immature people, the theory goes, don't have enough empathy to understand why a common word in a foreign language could be so hurtful.
To have Prof. Patton suspend for this, I'd argue this has cause great pain to Chinese speaker to see a legitimate phrase, correctly used and taught (by a foreigner no less), be deemed racially inflammatory, with the Prof. suspended.
> Not only does this barely resemble the racial slur, it is indistinguishably used in a context where it's implicitly clear and even explicitly stated that it's a term from another language.
In the linked video it sounds exactly like the slur, To a surprising extent.
It was introduced with no warning and I’m not surprised people were shocked if this was the same context as the class - although we don’t know the full details!
I’d be surprised just to hear a word sounding like “fuck” in the middle of a chinese class, although it’s probably not considered as offensive.
It doesnt surprise me at all that some people were upset and it seems very unwise on the part of the professor, who would surely know that this would provoke a reaction. A suspension from teaching his one class for a term will defuse the situation and perhaps he can return to teaching after.
>It was introduced with no warning and I’m not surprised people were shocked if this was the same context as the class - although we don’t know the full details!
What possible other details could there be? We literally have the recording of what happened before. He explains that there is a filler word in chinese, gives the english translation and then the chinese word. Do you really think it's reasonable to expect an additional warning? Should every philosophy lecture come with a short preface that the word 'Kant' may come up and is not intended to cause any harm? (mind you, the dean's letter is actually way more strict: it literally straight up says that these words are 'unacceptable', no qualification about a warning or anything).
Hell, how far do you think this should go? If a student has a potentially offensive sounding name, do they have to give a warning before they introduce themselves? Or should they have to anglicize their name?
In the video it was clearly preceded by "in Chinese". And he was talking the whole time about filler worlds. Clearly, context has been established. And the audience of a communications class at university level can be expected to understand that other languages contain words that might sound offensive to English native speakers. Do people really think Prof. Patton intended to insult people of color, in an online class? Are people really getting offended when Chinese use 那个, or when they overhear Russians discuss кни́ги? Will I get censored for merely mentioning these words and not child-proofing my post with "warning: words in this post might be considered offensive"?
> “A video is circulating on the Korean Internet of a black gentleman yelling at and threatening an elderly Korean couple. His violent behavior was the result of him misunderstanding the elderly man’s comment to him. The elderly man reportedly said “니가 여기 앉아” (a sign of consideration) (“You can sit here” = Niga Yuh gi anja”), but not knowing Korean, the man in question interpreted “니가” as the N-word which led to his violent outburst.
Like.. in Spanish the word "negro" is "black". Can Spanish teachers now no longer use that word? Crazy.
It's like when chat filters (e.g in games) censor words based on the 'English' language. When I chat in dutch / flemish, my friends just see me censored for quite common words in our language. And they're often not even spelled the same as the English word that is bad.
> It's like when chat filters (e.g in games) censor words based on the 'English' language. When I chat in dutch / flemish, my friends just see me censored for quite common words in our language.
I'm Dutch and play AoE2 with some friends. The in game chat is basically useless for us. Just about every Dutch sentence will be blocked.
We tried switching to English, but every color (!) is now also banned. Asking "who is joining the blue team?" will become censored... Good job Microsoft.
From what I can tell, those countries are now racist based on their names and should be fired.
History books should be burned.
No human should ever speak to another human again.
But we all need to be in offices in close quarters once the pandemic ends, so that we can fire each other for accidental using the word "she" in a conversation.
25 years ago (give or take), a man filed a lawsuit against Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia. He was helping his son write a report on Niger but accidentally added a letter. The emotional distress it caused to him and his son led to the lawsuit.
For fucks sake. This sort dumbarse action sets back the cause of equality by a country fucking mile. This stuff happens when you take Dr DiAngelo too seriously and ignore what minorities are saying and just go with your ill informed guilt ridden heart.
Clearly he wasn't saying what is implied. I had assumed that "nà ge" was a slur in mandarin(when I saw the original news report). Its 100% clear from context that its nothing to do with race. Whats more the context is directly linked to the three words he says.
We must strive for equality, We _must_ help wider society by lifting up minorities.
This does not achieve this, in fact it will embolden the dickheads who want to make this a "thing" (SEE! "they" want to undermine us etc etc etc)
Clearly it is a thing, why pretend otherwise? If this were some extremely small minority, it would not have such widespread cultural influence now. It is a thing.
I'd bet big money that even DiAngelo would not find that lecture offensive in any way.
Nor does she advocate for retribution when unintentional slights happen. In her online lectures, she tells a story of how she offended some Black colleagues by making a silly joke. She apologized and they came to an understanding that the colleague would help keep her in-check when it happens again and they carried on.
Some time ago a fellow countryman, a basketball player, made it into NBA. After a controversial ruling by a judge that one of his teammates performed a foul, he kept yelling "ni ga, ni ga, ni ga". Contextually translated, he meant "he hadn't touched him".
He had to apologize profusely and explain to no end what he meant. Regardless, his career was soon over after that.
We, non-native speakers, must be really careful about using words in our own language that may sound offensive in the other language. What a world we created :(
>We, non-native speakers, must be really careful about using words in our own language that may sound offensive in the other language. What a world we created :(
And it's in English as well. Growing up in Europe but heavily influenced by American Music, Movies, TV and Internet one grows up thinking that N----- or Nigga is fine to use. You hear it all the time, especially in music.
Couple that with the fact that we don't really have "career-ending words" in Europe and it leads to a lot of awkward moments. You can't even say the word, and Americans tend to censor the word even when anonymously typing it online. I did because this is an American forum, but it's really weird to see to be honest. You can't even say the word as part of a debate over the word.
The fact that you aren't even allowed to sing along with a song without muting yourself on certain words that the singer sings anyway... it's just mind boggling to me...
Yeah, I also noticed that Americans tend to handle every taboo word like "Voldemort". From when I was kid I always found it so odd how Americans use all of these one-letter variants of their taboo words (n-word, f-word, etc) even when everyone involved in the conversation is an adult and should be able to handle a bad word. It's one of the weirdest parts of their culture to me.
One way to think about it is that there's almost no context where it would be constructive for a non-Black person to use the word (including singing a song, for example). Why? Because there is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context.
That's why the n-word euphemism was created and is the norm. It provides an acceptable replacement. When someone violates this norm, it creates resentment, intense frustration, and great offense for a large group.
> A while back a Dutch coach was forced to resign after using the word because it was in a song: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/feb/18/fc-cincinna....
> The fact that you aren't even allowed to sing along with a song without muting yourself on certain words that the singer sings anyway... it's just mind boggling to me...
From the article (emphasis mine): "Jans is alleged to have used the slur while singing along to a track being played in the Cincinnati locker room. A player is understood to have told Jans, who is Dutch, about the significance of the n-word in America. Jans is also understood to have made an inappropriate remark about slavery during a team visit to memorials in Washington DC in October.
I do not know what the details are around "inappropriate remark about slavery", but if I was a player (esp. a black player), I would find it difficult to respect that coach.
Readit News
EDIT: I briefly forgot this, but there is a similar Korean word "내가" which is "me" or "I", and pronounced "ne-gah". Example usage: 내가 이 밥을 먹었어요. (I ate this food. "Ne-ga ee bap-uhl mug-uss-uh-yo")
EDIT2: Korean is not my native language so forgive me for this, but "you" is usually just 니 ("nee"), and "me" or "I" is just 내 ("ne"), but the 가 ("gah") part is used like a conjunction to connect to the rest of the phrase.
EDIT3: Ok, so I talked with a better Korean speaker about this and 니가 "nee-ga" is sort of a regional dialect (kind of like a slang term) for 너가 "nuh-ga". 니가 "nee-ga" is more commonly used in southern parts of South Korea, as the proper way of saying/spelling "you" is 너가 "nuh-ga". My Korean is influenced with the southern regional dialect as my parents were from that region. Sorry for the possible confusion. (So just "you" is 너 "nuh".)
EDIT4: PSY (of Gangnam Style fame) has a song titled "Champion" that uses 니가 "nee-ga" a lot:https://youtu.be/uA4fV7Y14eg?t=49
If it was a German professor talking about buttermilk do you think he would given a build up?
An example of communicating something in a different way would be how in Spanish the pronoun is completely dropped in most cases. This is because it's completely redundant as the verb will be conjugated to include the pronoun.
An example of things not mattering is in English where we don't distinguish between rivers that flow into other rivers and rivers that flow into the sea. French speakers might be confused (how do you know whether it's a fleuve or a rivière?), but the answer is we simply don't care.
When learning a natural language, always assume that it works for them. Your aim is not to be able to translate your language to theirs, it is to be able to communicate your thoughts into their minds. Keep an open mind about what's important to transfer and how this can happen.
I speak no Korean at all, but had no trouble telling them apart. Speakers of the language will undoubtedly be more competent than me.
https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=auto...
...so I would not be surprised to see that at some point happen at a real university.
At RPI, the number of Asian professors and students plummeted after Shirley Ann Jackson took over.
I feel bad for the future UCS students who will miss out on his class. I also wonder to what degree this decision will have a chilling effect on the content of other lecturers at UCS. Could history professors see this as a reason to exclude primary content that reflects the racist realities of the past? Or maybe music professors will reconsider whether they can teach the work of artists who might be cultural appropriation? It's hard to say.
I hope that another university makes this professor a job offer - or at least speaks out in support of his teaching. This seems so bizarre that I can only reckon with it by imagining it's a west-coast cultural phenomenon. I certainly wouldn't imagine this going down the same way in my home state (North Carolina) - but maybe I'm underestimating how pervasive this extreme sensitivity trend really is. There WAS an incident with a professor who got suspended at NC State recently ( https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article235... ) but in that case - the professor was publicly mocking his students in a way that may or may not have been interpreted as sexist. Even if the suspension for that scenario actually overkill (which I think it was) - it seems crazy pants to put the professor who was thoughtfully teaching a lecture in the same category as one who gets a kick out of insulting students for laughs.
Exactly. Otherwise it is nothing more than a politically correct reaction to everything that moves in the direction of what they think is 'offensive'. Even if it unintentionally "sounds" like it.
For the professor there is no 'Please, I can explain...' and there is no redemption. Instantly found guilty. This is the clownworld order folks.
Edit: just watched the video. He was not teaching a chinese course. A bit of a suspicious example he picked if you ask me.
That could easily be the difference between "deal" and "end of relationship".
It is all they can do.
the same thing happens with the corona responses of universities. colleges could open with distancing rules, sensible mask usage (inside, not outside), testing, and swift quarantine. that would basically eliminate spread in the learning environment.
the problem, of course, is outside the learning environment, where students will inevitably let their guards down and mix unsafely, but that's not the purview of the university. these are (young) adults, and the university's responsibilities end at the campus edge. what the university can do is refuse access to the infected on campus (in conjunction with plentiful testing), and provide swift and compassionate support for students who do get infected (and can't come on campus), without overstepping into paternalism.
then the responsible students will have access to the education they desire (and paid for), while the irresponsible will be denied (temporarily, likely having to repeat a semester or even a year). this will incentivize good behavior without resorting to autocratic mismanagement like this.
It's unbelievable that this "understandably" caused pain to anyone. There is a linked recording of him using the term. Not only does this barely resemble the racial slur, it is indistinguishably used in a context where it's implicitly clear and even explicitly stated that it's a term from another language.
The dean and faculty should stand behind the professor and educate whoever got upset about this that you can not expect punishment for obvious misunderstandings.
Also, it might be really helpful to add (nà ge) to the title as it's impossible to make out the essence of the article for anyone who doesn't know the logographics.
Having said that, I also understand the terror that this kind of issue generates in organisations. Imagine you're the dean of an institution in an environment where people only read the headlines in their Facebook news feeds. I can easily imagine the headline "Marshall School of Business refuses to discipline lecturer who repeatedly said the n-word in class" followed by a dissembling write-up of angry students and vague mentions of the fact it wasn't intentional. This kind of thing can turn into a reputational firestorm and do real long-term damage to student recruitment.
Deans of educational institutions are between a rock and a hard place. If they were in charge of the narrative, it would be possible to be reasonable and say "This wasn't something to be upset about, and here's why". But they rarely are in charge of the narrative and want to shut these issues down as quickly as possible.
I can imagine a reasonable way forward might be to get the students and lecturer together to talk over the issues, and have a nuanced discussion about differing languages, much like what's happening in some of the comments here. But by the time you've organised that the firestorm is well underway and the damage is already done.
As far as I see the letter behind the link was written by the "judge" in this "trial": "Geoff Garrett, Dean" -- it's he who wrote:
"Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students."
Sounds very similar! Say no more!
It's a matter of time we got into this hysteria.
So, I am happy to engage you in debate, and I'll even do your job for you by trying to precisely name the propositions that you think are so obviously incorrect.
Most of the hits I see for "milk is racist" is about the alt-right using milk drinking as essentially an aesthetic symbol, which seems like a) a factual observation b) not a claim about milk itself being racist, but about its adoption as a racist symbol.
I see a 2016 CNN article called "math is racist," which, if you read it, is clearly arguing that mathematical models are being used in ways that reinforce racism, not that the brute facts of mathematics are themselves racist, either. This argument is generally widely accepted, so I'm curious if you disagree with it.
I can't find any articles about interior design being racist, but I do see articles about the interior design industry confronting race problems. This doesn't sound surprising or extreme either - I'd expect that most industries have race problems of some sort.
You'll note that I have not called you bigot, racist, fascist, nor xenophobia [sic], and I'd appreciate if you returned the favor and engaged my arguments on the merits.
Why, aren't they adults? (Over 17 will do in most countries to consider them so).
Seems like their current system makes that all too easy.
Also, sounds very open to potential blackmailing of people. :(
I'm not gonna lie, my blood boiled over this one.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076NVFT5P/
In the linked video it sounds exactly like the slur, To a surprising extent.
It was introduced with no warning and I’m not surprised people were shocked if this was the same context as the class - although we don’t know the full details!
I’d be surprised just to hear a word sounding like “fuck” in the middle of a chinese class, although it’s probably not considered as offensive.
It doesnt surprise me at all that some people were upset and it seems very unwise on the part of the professor, who would surely know that this would provoke a reaction. A suspension from teaching his one class for a term will defuse the situation and perhaps he can return to teaching after.
What possible other details could there be? We literally have the recording of what happened before. He explains that there is a filler word in chinese, gives the english translation and then the chinese word. Do you really think it's reasonable to expect an additional warning? Should every philosophy lecture come with a short preface that the word 'Kant' may come up and is not intended to cause any harm? (mind you, the dean's letter is actually way more strict: it literally straight up says that these words are 'unacceptable', no qualification about a warning or anything).
Hell, how far do you think this should go? If a student has a potentially offensive sounding name, do they have to give a warning before they introduce themselves? Or should they have to anglicize their name?
https://www.amren.com/news/2011/08/foreigner_on_ko/
> “A video is circulating on the Korean Internet of a black gentleman yelling at and threatening an elderly Korean couple. His violent behavior was the result of him misunderstanding the elderly man’s comment to him. The elderly man reportedly said “니가 여기 앉아” (a sign of consideration) (“You can sit here” = Niga Yuh gi anja”), but not knowing Korean, the man in question interpreted “니가” as the N-word which led to his violent outburst.
Like.. in Spanish the word "negro" is "black". Can Spanish teachers now no longer use that word? Crazy.
It's like when chat filters (e.g in games) censor words based on the 'English' language. When I chat in dutch / flemish, my friends just see me censored for quite common words in our language. And they're often not even spelled the same as the English word that is bad.
I'm Dutch and play AoE2 with some friends. The in game chat is basically useless for us. Just about every Dutch sentence will be blocked.
We tried switching to English, but every color (!) is now also banned. Asking "who is joining the blue team?" will become censored... Good job Microsoft.
History books should be burned.
No human should ever speak to another human again.
But we all need to be in offices in close quarters once the pandemic ends, so that we can fire each other for accidental using the word "she" in a conversation.
TL;DR: There is nothing new under the sun.
Clearly he wasn't saying what is implied. I had assumed that "nà ge" was a slur in mandarin(when I saw the original news report). Its 100% clear from context that its nothing to do with race. Whats more the context is directly linked to the three words he says.
We must strive for equality, We _must_ help wider society by lifting up minorities.
This does not achieve this, in fact it will embolden the dickheads who want to make this a "thing" (SEE! "they" want to undermine us etc etc etc)
Clearly it is a thing, why pretend otherwise? If this were some extremely small minority, it would not have such widespread cultural influence now. It is a thing.
I strongly suspect that this decision was not made by someone from the affected minority, so it seems unfair for them to shoulder the blame.
Nor does she advocate for retribution when unintentional slights happen. In her online lectures, she tells a story of how she offended some Black colleagues by making a silly joke. She apologized and they came to an understanding that the colleague would help keep her in-check when it happens again and they carried on.
He had to apologize profusely and explain to no end what he meant. Regardless, his career was soon over after that.
We, non-native speakers, must be really careful about using words in our own language that may sound offensive in the other language. What a world we created :(
Which country? Do you have a link to any article on this? Or a name I can search for?
The basketball player in question was Marko Milič: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marko_Milič
And it's in English as well. Growing up in Europe but heavily influenced by American Music, Movies, TV and Internet one grows up thinking that N----- or Nigga is fine to use. You hear it all the time, especially in music.
Couple that with the fact that we don't really have "career-ending words" in Europe and it leads to a lot of awkward moments. You can't even say the word, and Americans tend to censor the word even when anonymously typing it online. I did because this is an American forum, but it's really weird to see to be honest. You can't even say the word as part of a debate over the word.
A while back a Dutch coach was forced to resign after using the word because it was in a song: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/feb/18/fc-cincinna...
The fact that you aren't even allowed to sing along with a song without muting yourself on certain words that the singer sings anyway... it's just mind boggling to me...
The Wikipedia entry explains the historical context of why the word is so extremely painful - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger
One way to think about it is that there's almost no context where it would be constructive for a non-Black person to use the word (including singing a song, for example). Why? Because there is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context. That's why the n-word euphemism was created and is the norm. It provides an acceptable replacement. When someone violates this norm, it creates resentment, intense frustration, and great offense for a large group.
> A while back a Dutch coach was forced to resign after using the word because it was in a song: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/feb/18/fc-cincinna.... > The fact that you aren't even allowed to sing along with a song without muting yourself on certain words that the singer sings anyway... it's just mind boggling to me...
From the article (emphasis mine): "Jans is alleged to have used the slur while singing along to a track being played in the Cincinnati locker room. A player is understood to have told Jans, who is Dutch, about the significance of the n-word in America. Jans is also understood to have made an inappropriate remark about slavery during a team visit to memorials in Washington DC in October.
I do not know what the details are around "inappropriate remark about slavery", but if I was a player (esp. a black player), I would find it difficult to respect that coach.
https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44209141