Oh, good god, I am tired of Americans hiding behind their whole "right to free speech". In fact, I would like to take the freakin' Constitution and light it on fire. The right to free speech does not mean the right to be racist, offensive, cruel, hurtful, etc.
Without the right to free speech, America really has no reason to exist. Free speech means anyone has the right to say what they want to say without government intervention. If the government intervenes, it may mean your right to disagree with me may disappear. The flipside of free speech is that I have the right to be judged by what I have said by people who agree or disagree with me. Who do you propose should adjudicate those rights? I have been to places where free speech is not allowed and I have no desire to roll back hard-won freedoms. Some of my friends in university and business were from former Soviet-bloc countries and they had no illusions about what happens when freedom is lost. A Czech boss that I had got a good laugh about one joke:
Remember the motto of the Sovietsky Express card - Don't leave home! (A play on the American Express Card motto of "Don't leave home without it" that was heavily advertised at the time.) He had been a professor of mathematics in the Czech republic who was sent to Egypt as an exchange teacher and when the time came for him to return, he decided that if he did, a better opportunity would come up. It did - he was set to the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and when it came time for him to return, he didn't. When any freedoms fall, they all fall.
And the N word is offensive, there is no refuting that. Saying otherwise is just vile.
And I never use it. But I prefer to give someone enough rope to hang himself with - if someone calls someone else by that name, I know what to think of him (and in case you are wondering, I think he is an idiot).
You talk as if people are choosing to be offended, just to annoy people. And what is so wrong with people not wanting to be offended? We talk about Political Correctness as if it's something bad and trying, when really, it's just people striving for equality.
What is wrong with people not wanting to be offended is that no discussion and no learning is possible. There was a local university that tried to ban the use of the phrase "Israeli apartheid". If I were Palestinian, I would be offended about the ban because it describes the situation accurately. If I were to attend a course on modern history, there would be a very chilling effect - using a term of this type or any other landmine term would get me expelled or sanctioned in some way. So no objections could be made, no discussion could take place and the course would be indoctrination, not education.
Political correctness is not about equality - it is a way of looking down on some people as "lesser" and finding a euphemistic way of addressing them. I am quite sure the events around the movie "Stand and Deliver" which is about a teacher who tried to get his dropout-prone Hispanic students to learn calculus were handled with politically correct language by the school board who thought Hispanic students were constitutionally incapable of learning anything, let alone calculus. And don't forget, according to the originator of political correctness, you are not an American, you are a Yankee imperialist running dog. That was according to Chairman Mao, the man who established political correctness while killing ten million people.
Ask yourself, is there a company that would not hire a black woman but would hire a person of colour? Is there a girl who would not date a short guy but would date a vertically-challenged guy? In a few years, the word "challenged" will become as politically incorrect as any of the euphemisms before it.
Universities are getting this reputation now:
It may be a joke meme, but it contains a germ of truth - professional offense takers have taken control of the schools and many see the current crop of graduates as people who will wilt under any adverse circumstances.
We're talking about one incident in one school, and you honestly think that "education will be lost" because one school chose to respond this way? And, again, there are many, many books which cover many, many themes and subjects which don't contain offensive language including books on race. What is so wrong with removing books that offend/hurt students, in favour of books which don't?
The majority of schools and universities are moving in this direction. Both Jay Leno and Bill Maher have remarked that universities are now so sensitive to any perceived slight that they will not do comedy at universities anymore. What is wrong with removing books? The student gets a sanitized view of what has happened. One of the things that university is supposed to do is acquaint students with all the ideas that are floating around, not just the "approved" ideas. How else can you challenge anything if you are kept from seeing it?
The N word will always be offensive, to suggest otherwise is awful. The black community have adopted the word as a way to reclaim it and try to diffuse its harmful and damaging connotations, similarly to the way women have tried to reclaim the word "slut". It doesn't make the meaning behind the word any less degrading or harmful. Also, for every black person who uses the word, you will find another black person who reviles it.
And what is the correct method to eliminate the use of this word (which I never use)? Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Laying things open to view with the reasons behind its use and offensiveness is really the only way to eliminate it.
No one believes this, myself included, so don't condescend me. Racism will never end, it simply evolves to what is accepted at the time.
Political correctness is simply a means of hiding racism, otherwise it wouldn't be in such common use among racists who are in positions to do real damage. There are a lot of people who take political correctness at face value - if a person says "person of colour", they believe he or she cannot be racist.
No, the school took a decent way out, and showed that it is sympathetic to the student's feelings and emotions. And that isn't a bad thing in my books.
The school took what could have been an important subject and wimped out. There was once a TV series about a school where this exact situation came up and they handled it by education (novel idea, isn't it?) They studied the history of the "n" word, its evolution (it was the politically correct, least offensive word at one time) and its effect on speaker and listener. And that is the only thing that stopped its use in the story.
