Although the headline is your typical NY Post outrage clickbait, the article at least strongly implies that what got him fired wasn’t his mixing up two black students, but his own unhinged response to the incident:
Hours after what he called an “innocent mistake,” lecturer Christopher Trogan, 46, sent a rambling, nine-page email to students in his Composition II classes explaining the faux pas — and defending, without being asked, his “entire life” of working on “issues of justice, equality, and inclusion,” the campus newspaper reported.
But it reminded me of something similar that happened at my alma mater, in which a professor said the N-word aloud in class. She was quoting an article about the difficulties Facebook was having with its hate speech filter being unable to distinguish actual hate speech from in-group usage. Some students were upset. At first I was kinda on the professor’s side. But then she wrote an email defending herself that actually pushed me more toward the upset students’ side. (Among other things, she pointed out that her parents were Holocaust survivors, which came across a bit like “how dare you call me an oppressor; I’m the one who’s oppressed!”) You can read more about the whole debate here, with links to the source material, here: The Controversy Over Quoting Racial Epithets, Now at UC Irvine School of Law
But it’s gotten me thinking. What is the right response if you feel you’re being unjustly accused of racism? How much consideration, how much of an apology, is owed to the people who feel you have wronged them? To what extent can/should you defend yourself or your actions, if you still feel that what you did was not wrong?
Hmm. I have forgotten people’s names (though I do not think I have ever mixed anyone up with anyone else); who hasn’t? Sometimes one is not really listening when someone tells you “Hi, I’m Bob” that one time.
I would assume that in the event one is ever formally accused of anything, sending mass emails (better make sure they are not unhinged, in that case!) or contacting the media is the nuclear option, though, not a first move, and that (fairly or unfairly) things are initially handled sub rosa.
With respect to the Fordham case, as a person who is often on the inside looking out of media coverage in these kinds of cases, I would strongly advise you to consider a couple things:
First, there’s this part of your linked article, buried in the middle:
Fordham spokesman Bob Howe told The Post the school “takes personnel matters very seriously,” but claimed “media representations regarding this issue do not reflect the facts in Dr. Trogan’s case.” He refused to elaborate.
The school, of course, as standard procedure would not be telling the New York Post details of a personnel matter.
Second, consider the actual sources of the information. The actual email is not reproduced. The only named source said she wasn’t upset at what the professor did. A second student declined to comment at all. Some of the information is from rate my professors dot com. What I am saying here is that they have nothing at all.
Third, the article is tagged “cancel culture.” Considering the first two points, I am not inclined to consider this an account that in any way conforms to the facts of the situation.
With respect to your more general question, I think it all comes down to what effect you want to have, right? You have to pick what’s important. For a lot of faculty, these kinds of complaints are very often interpreted as very personal and very hurtful challenges. They tend to respond in the way that people respond when they feel attacked. If your priority is to not let somebody say something “bad” about you, you fight the accusation. If your main priority is not getting fired, you don’t say shit. If your main priority is undoing any hurt, you apologize in a less selfish, less defensive way.
“Wow! I’m really sorry about that. I really didn’t intend to offend you, but I understand that what I said/did can be offensive. I will try to be better.”
Definitely don’t send a 9 page e-mail defending yourself and your background. Methinks he dost protest too much. And, there’s no reason to bring up your past doing social justice work – that strikes me as “some of my best friends are black.”
I’ve always said that the appropriate response is to not make it about you. Apologize for hurting anyone. Explain what you meant and why you don’t think it is racist, but in a deferential manner. Don’t make it into a power struggle where you need to prove your accusers wrong.
To avoid being a bigot, you already have to be willing to listen. You have to be open to minorities explaining why something you thought was innocuous is actually bad. That includes when it just happens, and they are understandably angry at you.
Sure, in the moment, you may naturally be defensive. But back out of that defensiveness as soon as you realize it. Remember that real, sincere apologies greatly ameliorate offense. Don’t think of apologies as capitulating or losing. Don’t even think of them as something you can’t take back—that way you can freely give them without worry.
For these specific incidents:
Apologize for getting their names mixed up, without even mentioning race. If someone acts like it was racist, then say something like “We all have unconscious biases. But it’s also just easy to get names mixed up when you’re a teacher. It’s like when your mom calls you your sibling’s name. Still, I get why it hurts, and I’m sorry.”
Apologize, saying that you did not mean to offend. You realize that this is a loaded word, but you felt it was important to say it to get the full impact (or some other argument). Then say we can have a discussion about whether it’s appropriate to read such words out loud, and say you’re willing to not say such words if that is the consensus.
The intent in both of these is that they are putting the focus on the action and who they may have hurt, and not on defending themselves. The bad way of responding is to turn it into some power struggle or huge attempt to defend your honor.
I’m pretty face blind. I know for sure that I’ve mixed up people and mistaken people for other people, and people have definitely done that to me as well.
It happens, whatever ethnic identity happens to be involved, “racism” should not be the default assumption.
When I’ve done it, all that is required is “sorry I’m terrible with names and faces” If that isn’t enough for them then it becomes a “them” problem and I don’t worry about it any further.
See… here’s the thing though. If he merely got people innocently mixed up, he should apologize for mixing them up.
But there’s no obligation on his part to apologize for their perception of him as racist. Nor should he be expected to make some sounds about equity or inclusion or whatever. The burden of proof is not on him to prove he’s NOT racist, IMO.
Fundamentally he didn’t do anything wrong or racist by mixing people up. He should apologize for confusing them, and leave it at that. No need to address the claims of racism at all.
Now if there was some actual racist component, then yeah, he needs to apologize for it. But in the absence of something overtly racist, his view and intent is equally as valid as someone who’s making the assumption (and that’s what it sure sounds like) that it was racist.
Within the context of being subject to either institutional cowardice or actual encouragement of the infantilization of so-called adults there is not much an individual can do that isn’t counterproductive to one’s career other than point a spotlight at the ridiculous people who are responsible and wait for the inevitable pendulum swing. This professor’s specific case, however, is delightfully ironic.
– I’m partly faceblind, and am extremely likely to mix people up. Since I’ve learned this is a known condition with a name for it, though, I try to remember to tell people, if only so they won’t get mad at me for not recognizing them in the grocery store.
For some years, I took farming interns; sometimes more than one at a time. One year, one of them got very indignant that I sometimes called her by the name of one of the others; and when I tried to give that sort of explanation, she said her mother had never done any such thing.
The indignant intern was Black (everybody else in that story was white). It didn’t occur to me at the time that that might have been relevant – it was quite a few years ago. It’s occured to me since: there’s a long history of Black people being assigned names by white people as if they didn’t have names of their own. Maybe there’s a major cultural problem with being called the wrong name that doesn’t exist in most white cultures?
He appears to have chosen to make nine pages of noises about it, unrequested.
Whether he did confuse them for racist reasons – including possibly just having lumped them together in some portion of his mind because they’re Black – I have no idea. But just not having intended to do something for racist reasons doesn’t mean one should never have to apologize. And telling somebody they did something that was perceived as racist is not the same thing as calling the person a racist.
Bolding mine; this is the actual question being asked. The thread title is very broad, and of course there are all kinds of ways to respond to different types of racism accusation. But I thinks it’s more straight forward to respond to a legitimately unjust accusation.
My general response would be start as sort of “I don’t understand, what do you mean?” “No, that’s not what I meant by saying X”, and then it depends on whether the accusation is an innocent mistake by the accuser, or a Karen-like predatory accusation.
The former might elicit a simple “sorry you felt offended, but that’s not the way is was”. I think it’s important to gently correct people who are on the edge of mistakenly putting a chip on their own shoulder:
I remember being in a group of school mates once on a field trip and a question came up from a chaperone; it had to do with some sort of math and we needed the answer fast because our bus or taxi was coming. I looked to kid A and asked him what the answer was. He was Chinese. He got all pissy, scowled, and said something along the lines of “why are you asking me?” The simple answer was “because you’re smarter than the rest of us”. Which was true, AND the real reason I asked him… he actually took pride in bragging about how he had the best marks not just in math but most subjects. He immediately changed his attitude and never made that kind of accusation again.
Years later as an adult who very consciously avoids making potentially racist remarks, I found myself actually set up by a Karen-type racist victim. While on a work trip at a fly-in lodge (meaning no opportunity for going home or leaving; you had to stay with the people you had come with and keep working with them) we were sitting around chatting after supper. One of my co-workers was native, and we had a couple other natives working with us I didn’t know. All the native guys were joking around and poking fun at each other; they do it to a greater degree than I’d do in my culture. But I was aware of this and kept out of the conversation apart from occasionally glancing over and nodding/smiling. The two other guys left the room, and native coworker started talking to me making fun of the other two guys. He was trying hard to get me to laugh and admit that yeah those guys were goofs (which they were); he wore this huge shit-eating grin. Finally I gave in with a short chuckle and said no more than “yeah”.
His expression immediately changed, and he said “hey that’s racist. You’re not supposed to laugh at that” I was dumbfounded… huh? “You’re not indian right?” was his next line. His line of reasoning was that only people of the correct culture/skin color may laugh at certain jokes. He was so out of line I won’t go over why and how, but I basically said nothing further, nor did he. We’d both had a couple beers so in my mind that was a good reason to just walk away from the conversation. It was a stupid one either to entertain, or defend from.
In neither of those situations did I feel any obligation to apologize.
Has it not occured to you that it might be an innocent mistake by the accused?
The response that seems to me to be called for, if one really doesn’t understand the accusation, is to ask for clarification. And then actually listen to the answer.
"That’s not what I meant by saying X” is not the same thing as (not actual quote) ‘X has no genuinely racist meanings and you need to be corrected for saying that it does.’
How do you know? Did you follow him around for the rest of his life?
I strongly suspect that he made it again in cases in which he suspected it was accurate. And I strongly suspect that in some situations he ran into during his life it was accurate.
He may well not have made it again to you, because you’d actually given him a good reply that applied to him as an individual, and because he may well have believed you gave him that reply honestly. But we’ve had people arguing on these very boards within the past few weeks that it’s reasonable to ask a question about India of somebody just because they’re the only person in the room of apparent Indian heritage.
– I agree that the guy in this story was being an ass. But I’d think anybody was being an ass who was persistently trying to get me to make fun of a couple of people who I didn’t know.
No, but we also should not shy away from acknowledging that systemic racism, rather than deliberate racism, can be an influencing factor in such mixups. “All those people look alike” is a genuine perceptual phenomenon in traditionally and persistently racist societies.
However, like most of the other respondents here, I don’t think that the mixer-upper should get involved in those details as a direct response to any accusation of racism. The point is that the mixer-upper has been inadvertently rude by misidentifying the person they were talking to, and their present responsibility is to acknowledge and apologize for it. The feelings of the subject of the inadvertent rudeness are more immediately important than those of the perpetrator of it.
This is close to my response. I’m not great with faces to begin with, and mask-wearing limits the information I have further, and this year I’ve gone from working with ~20 kids to working with ~200 kids, and it contributes to a lot of wrong names. My way of dealing with it:
I start off telling kids that I’m likely to mix names up, and I apologize in advance and ask them to correct me.
When I mess a name up, I apologize again, say the person’s name, and try to do better.
I’ll sometimes tell about when I taught two girls with long red hair and struggled with their names for weeks. This may be bogus hyperdefensiveness on my part, but it’s a way for me to communicate, “I do this with White kids too!”
I don’t write rambling emails about what a great antiracist I am, or do the third grade equivalent of that. Apologize, maybe tell a self-deprecating 1-sentence anecdote, move on.
That said, it’s naive to think that White people don’t sometimes receive this differently from Black people, given the cultural context.
Christ, just last week I mixed up my wife for another woman at church. Granted I wasn’t looking at her very closely, and there were masks involved, but it took me a few seconds and my actual wife calling at me from the wings to realize my mistake…
My daughter and son-in-law eloped, but when they returned they threw a big party. My gf had met a bunch of my SIL’s female relatives at a shower, so they were coming up and chatting. I saw another one of these women approaching so I went over to the bar to get us drinks.
When I returned, my gf asked if I knew the woman who she’d been talking to. I told her I did not, but guessed it might have been Matt’s grandma. Turns out it was my ex-wife who lives in Florida and who I never thought would be there.
If someone believes they have been unjustly accused of any offense, the reasonable thing to do is to defend themselves (although a rambling 9 page email is probably not the best defense in this case). If the charge is justified, then of course an apology is appropriate.