Based on the story to which you linked, he might deserve to win his suit–maybe. There is no indication from other sources that anything is “obvious.”
However, your link was told, pretty much, from “his side” and left out a number of significant points.
It seems pretty clear that the guys is, at minimum, tone deaf. If, at the staff meeting, he had wanted to ask “Given the context of the story, should we say ‘nigger’ or ‘N-word’ when reporting, this evening?” Then that is what he should have said. His remark, “Does this mean we can finally say the word n-----?” sounds pretty much the way that various idiots in The BBQ Pit sound when they whine that it is “racist” for blacks to able to use the word when whites can’t. The story makes no mention of any follow-up comment by him trying to explain his question, leaving the reader with the impression that he was just asking for the station’s blessing to say “nigger” on the air.
Your story alludes to the fact that his co-anchor was not happy with him, but somehow failed to mention the “n----- bitch” incident. There are, I am sure, two sides to that incident, but regardless how it happened, it still indicates a serious level of cluelessness on his part. When I have tried to tell various co-workers that they are not well-loved by other co-workers, I have generally refrained from quoting the actual insults, yet he felt prompted to include the hateful words while conveying his message.
Then, he was not taken out and shot at dawn the following day. He was simply not re-hired when his contract expired.
From looking at all the various stories on the situation, it would appear that he was simply in conflict with his co-anchor and the station decided to end the conflict by dropping him rather than her. He would certainly like to couch the failure to re-hire as an action of discrimination–it would make his lawsuit stronger–but we have not actually seen evidence that that was the case.
His failure to get a new job, (at least in that market), might be the result of rumors issuing from the station to other stations, but the station can hardly be responsible for what crews talk about with crews from other stations in their spare time. If he has evidence that the station has sent damning comments to other stations looking to hire him, he would have a case, but nothing like that has been mentioned. Perhaps he is simply as much of a liability as his clueless comments indicate.
The two examples of incidents in which he did use the word certainly suggest that he had a problem in communication, at minimum.
The word is not anathema, per se. The word is anathema in a number of specific contexts.
Even the black community has not arrived at uniform consensus regarding the use of the word. There are people who want it expunged from Huckleberry Finn while Chris Rock has used it in his routines. Different people in the black community have different opinions on whether ort where it could ever be accepted.
However, as a society, black and non-black, there is a general recognition that its use by whites is taboo, based on its several hundred year history of use as a term of denigration.
If the news staffer’s comment, "I can’t believe you just said that!" meant that the staffer was shocked at a white man speaking the word, I would consider that an overreaction. On the other hand, if the reaction was to an impression that Burlington gave that he was seeking carte blanche permission to use it whenever he wanted, the reaction was more understandable. Without actual context, (probably unavailable after seven and a half years without being corrupted by the aging of memories), we do not really have a context in which to judge his behavior at the staff meeting.
The context is provided by the subsequent HR meeting:
"Burlington was summoned to speak with the station’s Department of Human Resources, Ameena Ali, who is black, and was asked to give his side of the story. Burlington repeated the conversation from the staff meeting, including the epithet he had used.
“Tom, you’re still saying the word; why are you doing that?” Ali responded, according to court papers. This brought the meeting to an immediate end, and Burlington was suspended."
It was just the “saying the word” that was the crime. Not any context in which it was used.
OK. I would consider Ali a hypersensitive twit.
Of course, Burlington still has the issue with co-anchor Evans that more likely (IMO) led to the station wanting to drop him to clear out the conflict.
ETA: And Ameena Ali was not the staffer who originally objected, but an HR person who was commenting after the fact. (Unless you are going to suggest that all those people think just alike?)
From the sound of it, he certainly deserves his job back. Appropriate responses would be “Yes” or “No, keep using ‘the N word’” - not firing him for asking a reasonable question about whether using the word “nigger” when reporting on a ceremony that is entirely about the word “nigger” is authorised.
Folks who are reading his question as a legitimate query about station protocol, you’re realllly giving him the benefit of the doubt here. The word “finally” would not appear in a legitimate query, for one thing, and a legitimate query from someone who’s not incredibly tone-deaf would be something like, “How are we going to refer to this rally on-air?”
If his case laid out in best-possible terms still includes this petulant-sounding question in it, I see no reason to believe his claim that it was an innocent question.
I don’t think that’s what the scout master was implying, from what I read. The mother obviously didn’t believe it was hurtful or inappropriate, or foul language. I’m sure the black scout was using it in a casual, non-specific way, “nigga” like the way some people say “dude.” So he had to use a different angle to convince her why it wasn’t a good idea to allow the word to be used.
If the word in question had been the c-word I don’t think many would find fault with firing an idiot dumb enough to ask if he can finally use it on the air. By now almost anyone understands that using the N word is apparently not ok for broadcast, which is why the term “the N-word” is used instead, pretty much universally. For someone in his line of work, not getting that makes him appear not very bright, or even an idiot. (Regardless of wether it should be a taboo word, and regardless of his opinion on wether it should be)
It looks to me that there were issues between him and at least one co-worker. They decided to fire the one who looked most like an idiot. I think he probably got railroaded, but he helped them do it.
Your analogy is wrong because you are ignoring the context of the question. It’s more like if he wanted to know if he had to present a news report on “The V-Word Monologues”.
The thought occurred to me that the event that prompted the story, the NAACP burial, must not have been very effective if usage of the word still led to someone getting fired.
When that thought occurred to you, did you then have a second thought about how obviously that’s not a reasonable analysis of the event, and that obviously the NAACP didn’t think the event would magically end the word’s use across the globe?
I’m still astonished that anyone is reading his “Can we finally use the n-word” question as a legitimate question about linguistic protocol, as though the word “finally” has any place in such a question.
What’s your best understanding of why they, after considerable planning of this event and far more reflection on the word than you or I have done, chose this phrase?
Several people–including camille and grumman–have described it as a legitimate request for clarification. I think that’s absurd.
Sorry, meant to respond to this earlier. There is a difference in explicit language used, but I think the subtext is fairly similar. He was in a meeting with black people, and asked if “we” could “finally” use a vile epithet for black people. The implication is that he wants to be allowed to use a vile epithet that applies to people in the meeting with him, even if he didn’t ask specifically to be able to use it against them.
If he’d asked something like, “When we report on this rally, what word should we use, n-word or nigger?” I’d have more sympathy for him. If he said, “It’s going to be really awkward to report on this rally while saying n-word all the time,” I’d be fine with it. But the way he asked the question, he’s asking to use the epithet, and I don’t think it makes sense to read him as asking to use the epithet only in his reporting.
I think we’re largely in agreement, however. Again, you’re right that the explicit language he used was very different from specifically asking to call a specific person an epithet.
It would totally depend on the race of the speaker. I don’t think anyone should use the word if the word is found to be offensive but I can see how a black dude using the word might be less offensive than a white dude using the word. I still remember a time when black men and women called each other brother or sister rather than ni&&er and b!tch/ho I don’t think its an improvement.
Under many circumstances, I’d fire a man for consistently walking into the woman’s restroom but not fire a woman for doing the same. I’d similarly fire Joe for patting Larry’s butt every day, but I wouldn’t fire Larry for patting Larry’s butt every day.
I don’t know that the law ought to treat these things analogously to race, but socially they’re similar. It’s far less offensive to use an epithet that applies to your group than for someone outside of your group to use it.