No, I mean people hear something that some interpret as racist and some as not (like biggirl’s daughter hearing someone say, “You people are so incompetent”). And there are some who get more angry at the fact that others see racism than at the remark.
I don’t see that as an insignificant slight. And I think that if these things were just random sharp stones, as you say they were, maybe it wouldn’t be a huge deal. But they have historical weight behind them. At one point it wasn’t just hearing a bad word–it was knowing that the people using that bad word had the ability to hurt and kill you and could get away with it. Yes, things have changed, but I don’t think we can forget the history. Racial slurs and examples of discrimination still don’t exist in a vacuum–there’s a lot of stuff that really didn’t happen too long ago associated with it.
Without more detail, I can’t begin to form an opinion.
If I were to relate the story that a major metropolitan city had a department director forced to resign because he casually tossed around racial epitaphs, presumably you wouldn’t bat an eye.
But if you were to then learn that the racial epitaph in question was “niggardly,” as in, “We’ll have to be niggardly with this year’s budget,” and that the man had no history of racial comments, the story – and the conclusion – changes. Incredibly, when this happened in real life some people were still adamantly of the opinion that the department head should still lose his job; it was insensitive, according to them, to even use a word that sounded like the n-word, even though “niggardly” means ‘miserly,’ and has no etymological connection to the offensive racial slur.
So it’s possible, lee, that your complaint is well-founded, and it’s possible that you are overreacting. I have no way to tell.
If the one denying the bias had said just that what i saw was counter to what he saw, i would not be writing this. I don’t expect everyone to have the same observations that i do. His initial reaction was that he doesn’t pay attention to the kind of thing i took note of. Later he changed his statement to say he thought just the opposite of what i observed was what happened. Still that is not what prompts the op.
What prompts this is he has badgered me each day about my observation, trying to get me to recant or admit that sexism isn’t really a problem in the us and has never really been an issue for me.
I’ve seen similar reaction from other people to reports of various kinds of bias. There always seems to be someone invested in denying or trivializing any report of bias.
If the one denying the bias had said just that what i saw was counter to what he saw, i would not be writing this. I don’t expect everyone to have the same observations that i do. His initial reaction was that he doesn’t pay attention to the kind of thing i took note of. Later he changed his statement to say he thought just the opposite of what i observed was what happened. Still that is not what prompts the op.
What prompts this is he has badgered me each day about my observation, trying to get me to recant or admit that sexism isn’t really a problem in the us and has never really been an issue for me.
I’ve seen similar reaction from other people to reports of various kinds of bias. There always seems to be someone invested in denying or trivializing any report of bias.
Well, there’s a big difference, IMO, between denying that a specific instance of bias is real, and denying that the bias exists at all.
If you deny that sexism exists in this country (which is a moronic position to take), then of course you’re going to deny each and every specific instance of sexism. Not doing so would be counter to your own position.
So if this guy is really blind to all sexism, then he pretty much has no choice but to attack you. It’s his only weapon for keeping his belief alive.
I’m one of those people that gets annoyed by people playing the bias card. Why? Because it’s most often an excuse. It’s most often tossed out there when the claimant has to excuse some behavior. “Driving While Black” is a perfect example. Most of the time, it’s an excuse to cover up the fact that the driver was speeding or just tossed a cigarette out of the window.
Other times, it’s an unfair way to attach attributes to a person that they didn’t earn. So the job candidate, when asked “What if an engineer came to you and said _____?”, responds “Well, if he ____”, and all of a sudden, lee thinks he won’t give training to female employees or he’ll perhaps even sexually harrass one of them. That’s a completely unwarranted assumption.
Finally, there’s the attempt to gain sympathy when the claimant is of the insulted class. That especially offends me when I’m framed as a member of the “oppressive” class. It makes it seem like I did something dishonorable to get ahead, or that I’m enjoying an unearned advantage because of my sex/race/age. That’s just plain insulting. “Well of course our boss likes you- you’re a guy!” is not only an insult against the boss, but an insult against me as well, and often times, the speaker doesn’t realize it.
So that’s why this guy is insulted and keeps bringing it up. You implied that he has an advantage that you don’t- a penis. And that hurts him for all the above reasons.
My sum total reaction was to, when asked for my impression, note a behavior which I observed in an interview by describing the physical actions involved and the words used and how it contrasted to the candidates response to male interviewers. I also noted it could be due to a perception of relative status rather than difference in sex.
I’d ask for a cite, but it’d be a waste of time. So I’ll say you have no way of knowing this is true.
It doesn’t sound like she said anything like that. According to what lee has posted - and more details would really help, lee - she said the candidate addressed her male colleague differently than he addressed her. That’s not an advantage, and it’s about the interviewee, not her coworker.
I’ve read (on this very board) of instances where people would use the word “Canadian” as a racial slur for Blacks; so I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that someone who drops “niggardly” in casual speech is race-baiting (unless they are referencing Chaucer/Shakespeare).
Of course, they could be just naive; but that isn’t my first assumption…
It is a stretch, and an unwarranted assumption on your part. It’s really unfair. Here’s what actually happened. The speaker (white) was an aide to the mayor of Washington DC (black) and was asked about the budget of the agency he ran. He said he’d have to be niggardly with the money, and someone who heard him complained it was a racial slur. A week and a half later he resigned his job. The mayor rehired him after a national controversy that included criticism from Julian Bond of the NAACP. There was basically universal agreement that the mayor blew it, and that the offended party was wrong. It was the Shirley Sherrod incident of its time.
No, but Kite is a commonly used word and toy. Niggardly isn’t known or used in any casual/formal speech. The only instances anyone has heard/used it, is in discussions of English literature or in reference to it’s similarity to Nigger.
So when I hear it outside of these contexts I assume someone is race-baiting. Not the same as Kite. Not even close.
Right: this guy was naive in not realizing that someone would misunderstand his words to such a degree that he felt he needed to quit his job. Niggard is not a word you hear every day, but the way he used it was absolutely correct and there’s no reason to assume he was trying to say something racist (while working for a black man, speaking within earshot of at least one other black man, and talking about something that had nothing to do with race). Your assumption, at least in the case of David Howard, was a stretch and it is wrong.
In my experience, the prevalence of people denying bias where bias exists is nowhere near as high as the prevalence of people claiming bias where no bias exists. And this makes perfect sense because claiming bias even when no bias exists offers the claimant a lot of benefits (i.e. deflect criticism, claim moral superiority, put the other person on the defensive, etc) with very few, if any, downsides when shown to be mistaken.
Nobody said it was a world-shattering mistake. You were still wrong. And I don’t see why you need to make any assumptions about this in either direction.