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I once said in a senior staff meeting that we shouldn’t be niggardly with employee benefits. A disturbing quiet dropped over the room and I realized a half doze
by valuearb 6y ago
I once said in a senior staff meeting that we shouldn’t be niggardly with employee benefits. A disturbing quiet dropped over the room and I realized a half dozen white men and women were staring at me, while uncomfortably not making eye contact with our African American Business Development director.
The CEO rebuked me saying that was not the type of language I should be using. The Director of Business Development then spoke, he was a Stanford graduate who was always the nicest smartest guy in the room. He gently corrected the CEO, saying exactly what I understood, it was an Old English term meaning cheapness that had no connection (other than its sound) to the racial insult and he wasn’t offended at all.
Thank god for Johns erudite knowledge of historic English words and his omnipresent empathy but think it illustrates an important point. Intent should matter. Even if the word I used had a connection to a racial slur, I would have been unaware and in no way would intentionally use such a slur, not alone in a group of white men let alone in front of a valued colleague.
That word can never leave my mental database of descriptive terms and phrases, but I fight against its use even more so today, afraid it might unconsciously slip out.
- asddubs 6y agoTo be honest, when I hear someone use that word, I do assume it's primarily in service of saying something that sounds like the n-word with plausible deniability. It'd be something else if it was a commonly used word
- valuearb 6y agoI think that’s where it’s use ends. It’s always been a niche word, but with todays common assumption it’s racist few will want use it at all.
- ci5er 6y agoIMHO - you would be wrong. It is a perfectly good word. This horse-shit has to stop.
- dennis_jeeves 6y agoCorrection: this horse-manure has to stop :)
- asddubs 6y agoI don't know, you can tell that some people definitely like to play a verbal version of the "I'm not touching you" game, or get off on telling people "actually, it's not a slur". Obviously I'm not referring to what happened to this professor, though
- DanBC 6y ago> Obviously I'm not referring to what happened to this professor, though Why not? He mispronounced a word, and seems to have deliberately chosen it in order to be provocative. There are a million different pause words he could have used instead.
- Rebelgecko 6y agoI saw a reddit comment not long ago that said something along the lines of "Intelligence is knowing that the word niggardly has a non-racist etymology. Wisdom is deciding not to say it anyways because it's not worth the hassle" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_niggardly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_n...)