As far as I’m concerned, the only proper place for that word is on a Scrabble board if those happen to be the tiles that you have in your rack. But that’s just me. And you’d better be able to get at least a double word score for it.
I don’t think anybody here has argued that direct use of the word and quoting someone else’s use of it are the same thing.
Yes, if you look at it in isolation and ignore all context, it seems like a foolish overreaction to fire someone for this, just as it would be a foolish overreaction to label Bob Dylan a racist based on the song you quote. So most of us are assuming that there has to be more to it, that this was just the final example of a troubling pattern of behavior. Remember, the meeting was called specifically to address concerns about the CEO’s habit of putting his foot in his mouth around racial issues.
Absent other context, if someone had lost their job as, say, Chayrpyrsyn of the Evergreen State College chapter of Vegans Against Patriarchy, under similar circumstances, I would feel the likeliest explanation was knee-jerk SJW political correctness run amok. Given that wacky teenage SJWs tend not to sit on the boards of major corporations, it seems a much less likely explanation for this firing.
He made up quote using “nigger”, then attributed it to someone who there’s no evidence actually said it, and multiple sources say he was quite progressive for a white business owner in the south during the segregation era and actively avoided using any kind of slur for black people. If he was actually quoting someone then quoting their exact words is fine (like I did) but he’s not actually quoting someone, he’s obviously just using that as an excuse to throw the word into conversation, and paradoxically attempting to justify his own racism by using a word that anyone sensible knows he shouldn’t use in the first place. While the OP here tries to minimize it, the fact that he’s dropping an n-bomb when trying to convince people that he’s racially sensitive is extremely telling.
I also find it bizarre how on one hand conservatives are big fans of at-will employment and fight bitterly against any kind of employee protection on one hand, but when someone gets fired for making really dumb racist comments claim it’s somehow a big problem. If you get caught with a rainbow flag it’s fine to fire you no questions asked, but if you’re the public face of a company and sling around slurs in a conversation about managing the company’s image then clearly people are just sensitive snowflakes overreacting.
Also, this.
And remember - only strawmen can refer to each other as “scarecrows”. That’s their word.
And you better have considered spelling “ginger” instead.
WTF, Shodan? As far as I knew at the time, BeenJammin’ had just made up that story. He/She didn’t link to any article or cite, and he/she was using it as a counter-argument about how people are too race-sensitive. I was making an educated guess based on my own experience working for large corporations. Can you really not tell the difference? What was I supposed to cite for my guess? I wasn’t even making an argument – I was saying that this may be what happened.
Later, BeenJammin’ linked to the story, which was what I was asking for. I still don’t think it’s on point, since his story is really nutpicking some over-sensitive people and the subsequent misunderstandings, which is fairly irrelevant to this discussion of a chairman so tone-deaf that he couldn’t avoid using a controversial term in a meeting about his tone-deaf controversies.
Just to be clear, Schnatter was forced out because the company was going to experience serious sales drops if he weren’t, not because of anything he said or stood for. The deplorables haven’t completed their conquest yet.
Not recognized by the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, which omits words “likely to offend players of the game”. This dictionary is “endorsed for recreational and school use” by the National Scrabble Association. The list of words permitted to serious tournament players is only available to dues-paying members, though, so I don’t know how offensive they’re allowed to be.
I personally would never use the word in Scrabble. Maybe I’ll start a Game Room thread about this tricky ethical topic rather than hijack this one.
You can spell “ginger” with the same letters. No excuse.
Exactly. Business is business, and anything that negatively impinges on the revenue/profit numbers will be quickly quashed regardless of any existential value judgments for or against it.
To expand on what I said earlier, I think it’s pretty obvious from the incident that he tosses around the word when he can get away with it and resents having to avoid it around witnesses. The quote has an air of resentment that he can’t use the word, and envy of Colonel Sanders for being able to get away with using it all the time. It’s just not the kind of thing that a non-racist being harassed over some minor thing picks to complain about, ESPECIALLY since Colonel Sanders is not actually known for being an overt racist/ He’s not even referencing an actual thing, he’s invented an aspirational fantasy of a CEO able to fling n-bombs casually, then used it to complain that he’s under too much scrutiny.
That’s just the thing - there IS no non-pejorative meaning attached to this particular word.
If we are allowing hypotheticals like, “What if he had said ‘n-word’ instead”, we can introduce hypotheticals like, what if he dimmed the lights, winked at the video conference camera and started singing
only the last line was, “Why can’t I refer to black people as niggers like the imaginary Col. Sanders that only exists in my demented imagination?” Would he have been fired for that!?
Well, that’s not really true, unless you’re separating the -er version from the -a version. That word is often used within the African American community as a term of friendship. Look up the lyrics for Lean Back from the Terror Squad, for example.
Just to be absolutely clear, I’m not defending John S. I just disagree that there is no non-pejorative meaning to that word.
In the case where the person speaking is a white businessman, your point is true but irrelevant. There is no non-pejorative meaning available for John Schnatter to use.
Agreed on that point. I think the use/mention distinction is a real one, but as pointed out above, some people “mention” because they really want to “use”, and that seems to be what JS was up to.
I think the “I was merely mentioning it” defence is probably legitimate about one time in a thousand.
It’s plain that he was pissing and moaning about the fact that he can’t use the word every day and twice on Sunday like they could back in the Good Old Days[tm] when Those People[tm] Knew Their Place[tm].
You can call it infantile, but this incident and the recent one at Netflix are proof that yes, certain words just plain unspeakable these days. I daresay as recent as 5 years ago I’m not sure those men would have been fired for what they said. I’m not about to debate whether that’s right or wrong, just pointing out that social norms have drifted this way. And given these incidents, if you’re a white person, you’re an idiot if you think you can get away with using the word even if you’re not using it derogatively.
There are words that are certainly banned in a professional setting like a conference call with your colleagues.