7 ms·

> "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

by ascar 6y ago

> "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.

newyorker2 6y ago
Acts like these set precedent for future actions by colleges across the spectrum.
wazoox 6y ago
Yup, this "excuse letter" looks exactly like what a victim of a sham trial would write under Stalin or Mao. This is frightening.
- acqq 6y ago
  > 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." Sounds very similar! Say no more!
  - atemerev 6y ago
    Depending on the Mandarin dialect, it can sound almost exactly the same (as many Chinese people had discovered in English-speaking countries). I guess that what’s happened. We Russians are usually told to never say the Russian word for “book” while in the US, or there will be consequences :)
    - tyingq 6y ago
      Seems like you would be okay as long as you emphasized the strong K sound at the front.
coldtea 6y ago
>Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students Why, aren't they adults? (Over 17 will do in most countries to consider them so).
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  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.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    That's not maturity, that's soapiness. Or rather, to tell it as it is, it is a mix of the fragility of spoiled brats and feigned offense to be used to advance one's self...
hintymad 6y ago
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. It's a matter of time we got into this hysteria.
- geofft 6y ago
  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.
  - 6y ago
crc32 6y ago
> 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.
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  >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?
- samus 6y ago
  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"?
frereubu 6y ago
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.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  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?
  - geofft 6y ago
    Frankly, the point of the university today is to provide a service for paying customers. When you see a job posting that says that a bachelor's degree in such-and-such field is required, the employer is hardly asking to get candidates who have spent four years freely discussing ideas like they're one of the figures in The School of Athens; they're asking to get candidates who know certain things and have experience doing a bit more self-directed work than they would in high school. (That's also why the university degree can be reduced to a GPA instead of a dissertation or set of publications.) Now, it's definitely a problem for society that people who want to spend their lives engaging in academic debate, which is a thing we should encourage, can rarely find a job that supports them in doing so, and the closest they can find is providing vocational training to 20-year-olds who are ready to leave the academy once they've received the service they've paid for. But it doesn't really help either the professor or the student to pretend that the modern undergraduate classroom is anything else.
Reedx 6y ago
The Coddling of the American Mind is good deep dive on this and helps explain the phenomenon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076NVFT5P/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076NVFT5P/
justinclift 6y ago
For all we know, this could be a disaffected student seeing an easy way to get revenge for not being given the grade they want. Seems like their current system makes that all too easy. Also, sounds very open to potential blackmailing of people. :(
calyth2018 6y ago
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. I'm not gonna lie, my blood boiled over this one.

by ascar 6y ago

newyorker2 6y ago

Acts like these set precedent for future actions by colleges across the spectrum.

wazoox 6y ago

Yup, this "excuse letter" looks exactly like what a victim of a sham trial would write under Stalin or Mao. This is frightening.

acqq 6y ago
> 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." Sounds very similar! Say no more!
- atemerev 6y ago
  Depending on the Mandarin dialect, it can sound almost exactly the same (as many Chinese people had discovered in English-speaking countries). I guess that what’s happened. We Russians are usually told to never say the Russian word for “book” while in the US, or there will be consequences :)
  - tyingq 6y ago
    Seems like you would be okay as long as you emphasized the strong K sound at the front.

coldtea 6y ago

>Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students Why, aren't they adults? (Over 17 will do in most countries to consider them so).

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
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.
- coldtea 6y ago
  That's not maturity, that's soapiness. Or rather, to tell it as it is, it is a mix of the fragility of spoiled brats and feigned offense to be used to advance one's self...

hintymad 6y ago

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. It's a matter of time we got into this hysteria.

geofft 6y ago
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.
- 6y ago

crc32 6y ago

> 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.

ImprobableTruth 6y ago
>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?
samus 6y ago
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"?

frereubu 6y ago

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.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
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?
- geofft 6y ago
  Frankly, the point of the university today is to provide a service for paying customers. When you see a job posting that says that a bachelor's degree in such-and-such field is required, the employer is hardly asking to get candidates who have spent four years freely discussing ideas like they're one of the figures in The School of Athens; they're asking to get candidates who know certain things and have experience doing a bit more self-directed work than they would in high school. (That's also why the university degree can be reduced to a GPA instead of a dissertation or set of publications.) Now, it's definitely a problem for society that people who want to spend their lives engaging in academic debate, which is a thing we should encourage, can rarely find a job that supports them in doing so, and the closest they can find is providing vocational training to 20-year-olds who are ready to leave the academy once they've received the service they've paid for. But it doesn't really help either the professor or the student to pretend that the modern undergraduate classroom is anything else.

Reedx 6y ago

The Coddling of the American Mind is good deep dive on this and helps explain the phenomenon. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076NVFT5P/ https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076NVFT5P/

justinclift 6y ago

For all we know, this could be a disaffected student seeing an easy way to get revenge for not being given the grade they want. Seems like their current system makes that all too easy. Also, sounds very open to potential blackmailing of people. :(

calyth2018 6y ago

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. I'm not gonna lie, my blood boiled over this one.