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Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

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Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#511

Post by jjeaff »

banmeagaindan2 wrote: post #509
jjeaff wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally, it's important to note that modern day racism is more damaging to already marginalized groups or those that have historically suffered from it. In other words, a well educated Nigerian immigrant may not be damaged as much by the same level of racism as a Black person decended from slaves.

There exists an underclass in Ireland who have the same origin as the other Irish - but have many of the issues that exist in the African-American community. Live to about 50, developed a different dialect, very high crime rate - expected to be underestimated, constant violence, high domestic abuse, high illiteracy, very large families, living in squalor. Doesn't fit neatly into any faction's magic box of solutions.

I'm not really sure what your point is? That other marginalized groups exist?

As a society, we unfortunately discriminate against people based on lots of different factors.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#512

Post by originalbryan2 »

csunbird wrote: post #75
Insanity wrote: post #38

This doesn't make sense to me at all. 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.

Two countries in the world are called Niger and Nigeria. Shall we stop talking about those countries too?

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.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#513

Post by athms »

neonate wrote: post #422
corey_moncure wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nigerians today have to deal with the legacy of colonialism, war, pogroms and famine. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Civil_War "The Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War and the Nigerian-Biafran War) ... between 500,000 and 3 million Biafran civilians died of starvation." This is just scratching the surface.

I didn't mean to minimize any of that. There's no global ordering here.

You stated that American blacks had to deal with the legacy of slavery that happened more than a century ago. The epicenter of modern day slavery is Africa, with Africans enslaving other Africans. In 2018, about 62% of the African population endured some from of slavery.

If immigrants from Africa do better than native blacks, it isn't due to the legacy of slavery. Jamaicans, Dominicans, and Haitians have endured the legacy of slavery too, yet these immigrants do better economically as well. If systematic racism was real, it would hold back all blacks.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#514

Post by jjeaff »

koheripbal wrote: post #201
wwwhizz wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oof, we better fire all Korean professors. /s

Asian's receive an enormous amount of hate from the African American community. ...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.

It's not right, but it's well earned. The african american community also receives a fair amount of hate from the Asian community.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#515

Post by jjeaff »

pixel_fcker wrote: post #392
frereubu wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the way I understand microaggressions, which aren't to do with whether someone is offended or not. The idea is that if, for example, you're black, and day in, day out, there are lots of little things that on their own aren't worth being upset about (for example, people not holding the door for you, pushing in front of you in line, crossing the road rather than walk past you, assume you're low-level staff r…

From Wikipedia: > Microaggression is a term used for brief and commonplace daily verbal or behavioural indignities, whether intentional or unintentional It’s the unintentional part that I take issue with, which means that it’s not on you to understand the context of my statement, it’s on me to imagine the infinite variety of ways you might interpret my statement and vet them for possible insensitivity before making i…

If you don't understand micro-agressions, then you don't understand bullying. Because that's all micro-agressions are. Unintentional bullying.

Intentionality is not relevant with micro-agressions. Parse the nomenclature all you like, but people unintentionally cause harm all the time.

The issue is when as a society, those things are so commonplace that they repeat over and over in a constant loop.

For example, if someone accidentally bumps into you while passing you on the sidewalk, it's no big deal, they apologize and both people move on. Now imagine that everywhere you go, people keep bumping into you and apologizing all day long, multiple times a day.

You know no one means anything by it, but the aggregate of all that bumping is terribly frustrating and you can't even take it out on any individual person because you know they didn't mean it.

That's what many minorities deal with. And white people are completely clueless to what they are doing.

No one is talking about punishing the micro-agressors. Just educating them so we can minimize the distributed bullying campaign that we have been subjecting people to and give them some breathing room.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#516

Post by jjeaff »

KaiserPro wrote: post #98

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…

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.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#517

Post by jjeaff »

violetgarden wrote: post #366
BitwiseFool wrote: post #274

Anyone who is taught to look for racism everywhere - no matter how minor - will find it everywhere. The false-positive rate must be astronomical.

Yes! I am a female in the tech industry, and we are inundated with warnings about going into a male dominated field. I’ve noticed it gets to a point where some women can’t even receive criticism because they think “he wouldn’t talk to another man like that,” even if the criticism is valid. I can see why it happens though. We hear over and over about being harassed and put down that we almost subconsciously get a chip…

Yes, of course if you look for something you will find more of it. But many Black people are in fact not looking for it at all. And yet, it still finds them and it can hurt them because even if the intention is pure, the action can still hurt.

Perhaps you've had someone innocently comment about how nice it is to see a woman in engineering since there are so few? Maybe that doesn't bother you at all. But what if you get that comment constantly, several times a week for you entire career? I suspect it would start to weigh on you and you would become quite exhausted by it. You might even start feeling that you don't belong. Or maybe wonder if your gender is the only thing people notice about you.

Then also imagine that we all wore name tags that identified your career. And now you can't even escape it when you are not at work, you get it at the checkout line too. And from your waiter, etc, etc.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#518

Post by jjeaff »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #253

It sounds like he can sue for lost and potential lost salary for sure. This is not a legitimate reason to fire him if he was doing it innocently. Students could have said something and he could have avoided it I suppose. However whenever I hear the term "microaggressions" I know I'm talking with an idiot who values being emotional over being logical and just stop the conversation.

This was not a micro-aggression. And to discount the existence of real micro-agressions is rather lacking in critical thinking skills.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#519

Post by jjeaff »

himinlomax wrote: post #33

I've always found the US obsession with taboo words quite baffling. I used to tease Americans of my acquaintance by pretending to be offended when they said "oh my god" (dildo in French) or nick (fuck.) Context matters a lot in linguistic, and the Sapir-Worff hypothesis is not just unproven, it's almost certainly completely wrong.

There aren't that many taboo words in America. You can validate that by watching a few episodes of most any Netflix or cable tv drama. Europe, however, actually has illegal words. It is illegal to say heil hitler in germany or display nazi symbols. And I believe france has certain english words banned from official use.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#520

Post by banmeagaindan2 »

jjeaff wrote: post #511
banmeagaindan2 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There exists an underclass in Ireland who have the same origin as the other Irish - but have many of the issues that exist in the African-American community. Live to about 50, developed a different dialect, very high crime rate - expected to be underestimated, constant violence, high domestic abuse, high illiteracy, very large families, living in squalor. Doesn't fit neatly into any faction's magic box of solutions.

I'm not really sure what your point is? That other marginalized groups exist? As a society, we unfortunately discriminate against people based on lots of different factors.

So there are three factors that explain people.

Biology, Culture, Environment.

Right explains the world by Biology. The Left explains the world by Culture. The Liberals explain the wold by Environment.

It is possible that you only need to scoop from one box to find a policy - but...

If a society has not solved a problem for a long time it's likely the solution is in higher dimensions.

Our political order is good at solving problems with 1 factor or 2 factors but I think our weakness appears when we need 3 factors simultaneously because it is not possible to select for that.

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