I made the point earlier (in post #70) that this particular USC Dean is an idiot, and nothing I’ve read since has persuaded me otherwise. Indeed, in post #81@madsircool cites some of the history which led to the hasty hiring of this dean and the hypersensitive environment at the USC business school that was the likely reason for his overreaction. This place seems pretty messed up.
I will just add here that the professor himself appears to be no genius, either. Anyone who begins a sentence as quoted above and who is supposed to be an expert at effective communication has just failed miserably at it. In fact that single sentence contains variants of the word “include” no less than four times while conveying two different meanings. It’s grammatically correct but inelegant and messy as all hell. I wouldn’t want to be learning “effective communications” from this moron. But still, the fact remains that the dean of the business school is an even worse idiot, the kind that can actually be damaging to the values he purports to represent.
From the 2nd link posted in the OP: “Even individuals who are not actually stutterers may have an excessive addiction to such words. One can also say ‘zhèige zhèige zhèige… 这个 这个 这个… (this this this…)’. I’ve even heard people say ‘zhèige zhèige zhèige… …nèige nèige nèige…’ and vice versa.”
I’m curious who you counted each way. Care to share your counts?
That is absolutely going to happen anyway. Just like that poor guy who got fired (or not elected) for using the word “niggardly.” Hint: Neither of those things happened, but the former is how I always hear it referred to.
Has he? I’m not seeing that. Insensitive, careless, bad at being a communications professor – those I’ve seen. The students accused him of it, apparently. But even the letter from the dean seems to say that he said an insensitive or racist thing, not that he’s a racist.
Finally, it seems like a pretty common issue for Chinese speakers in the US or other English-speaking countries. Googling brings up other examples, and the comments in the OP’s 2nd link bring up a lot as well. Someone posted this question on Quora: “Is a shirt that says “那个(neige) plz” offensive (“neige” is pronounced very similar to the word “nigger”)?” Here’s a response I found relevant to this thread:
Are we debating the use of the Chinese term neiga or the professor’s skills as an educator?
Even if cooler heads eventually prevail, he will lead the rest of his life with his tail between his legs.
There is nothing wrong with a communication professor discussing the Chinese term neiga in the context of filler words. Those of you that are grasping at straws trying to say “ok but”. He should have done this or that. Give this one a pass. He did nothing wrong. Save it for a valid case.
Does this case invalidate all the real cases of racism? Of course not.
Id put you into the “ok maybe technically he isn’t racist but he did a racist thing, even if unintentionally.” Camp
Im in the “he did nothing wrong, this very common word exist in the Chinese language that just happens to sound alot like nigger” camp
Telling 1.3billion Chinese people to stop saying neiga is like telling the english speaking world to stop saying err, umm, like. Even if erummlike meant “your mother is a whore” in some foreign language.
I know this is true from personal experience. Many years ago I was cleaning up a textbook for learning Indonesian. Each chapter began with a dialog. All words that had not been previously introduced in the textbook were given in a vocabulary list following the dialog, so that students had quick and easy access to exactly the words they needed to follow the lesson.
The original edition had been very sloppy, and many new words were not included in each chapter’s vocab list. But it was extremely tedious to comb through, word by word, to accurately identify all of the new vocabulary.
My then-husband came up with a beautiful solution using the programming tools available at the time (it wouldn’t be hard today but this was 1991). He made a dictionary program, based on an English language dictionary, that would produce a list of all “misspelled” words in a section of text, which you could then add one by one to the dictionary. Then for each new section of text, it would only list new vocabulary as misspelled English, because I would have already added the previously introduced words.
I thought it was great until it proved to be oddly unreliable: there were Indonesian vocab words that it simply ignored, so that I failed to include the newly presented words in the list it generated.
The mistakes seemed so bizarre and random, until it finally dawned on me - the reason the dictionary wasn’t picking up on certain words was because they were English words as well.
For example, the word for “hour” in Indonesian is “jam.” Of course the dictionary didn’t pick that up as a misspelling. But because I was only thinking in Indonesian, I completely overlooked that “jam” is a word in English, too.
So, do you see how he could have handled it better, since he’s an expert communicator? A little heads up before saying what sounds like “nigga nigga nigga” to a group of students who are probably half tuned-out? Note, I’m not defending the dean’s or the students’ actions, but for an expert communicator, he could have done a better job. He shouldn’t have been suspended.
OK, please come back and let us know when that happens. That would be a bad thing. Also, maybe report back when Nigeria is threatened with nuclear annihilation if they don’t change the name of their country. On a smaller scale, please report back when all of Tyler Negron’s movies and specials are pulled from the streaming services. Thanks in advance! I’m happy you’re on the lookout for these hypothetical over-reactions.
This “communication professor failed at communicating” narrative, aside from being nonsense when discussing fluent English speakers, is irrelevant if the students did in fact claim that he was deliberately mispronouncing the word.
Years ago, I had a boss who was Chinese-American. Born in Los Angeles, he had would best be called a “California” accent and you would never guess his father did not even learn how to speak English until he was an adult. The only way you would know his Chinese heritage was his appearance.
Well, the company we worked for had business interests in China. My boss spoke Mandarin, and would often talk to these overseas facilities in Mandarin. At first, I had a hard time believing it was the same guy, as when he was speaking Mandarin, he sounded Chinese. His secretary, whose desk was right outside his office, told me that it was amazing hearing him. She also told me that one of the things he often said sounded like “N*****, n*****, n******” and he would do it “all the time.”
Well, I expressed doubt, figuring that she was just mishearing. So, she called me over the next time he was on the phone with those guys. It was true, and the only thing I could understand of their entire conversation. Always in repeated groups of three or four. I never asked him about it, mainly because I didn’t want to admit I was eavesdropping on his phone calls. This incident has finally let me know what that was all about.
IIRC, Yao Ming ran into this very problem when he joined the Houston Rockets in 2002. He had a Mandarin/English interpreter to accompany him in America, but Yao had to constantly say “that” aloud to his interpreter - often in the presence of black people.
One unaddressed issue in this whole kerfuffle with the USC administration’s response is that it promotes Anglocentrism - the notion that somehow other languages must cater to English-centrism and English speakers and English sensitivities, but not the other way around. (American English, that is.) It’s the exact opposite of promoting diversity.
I suspect it’s more than a case of tuning it out because “it’s awful.” I’ve taken a few college classes lately, to learn Spanish, and to add Teaching English as a Second Language to my English degree I got 300,000 years ago.
Anyway, the degree to which students are immersed in their phones or laptops during lectures was astounding to me.
I’ll bet most of the students had no idea what the context was-- their ears were just pricked when they heard “nega,” and they jumped to conclusions.
I don’t speak any Korean, but apparently there we have
Ne-ga(네가) = “you”
Nae-ga(내가) = “I”
Here we have an appalling video of an aggressive moron abusing an elderly Korean lady for saying one of these Korean words (it’s unlikely that someone of that age would speak any English), in South Korea.
Shame on her for such lack of cultural sensitivity, she clearly needs some diversity training.
No, I showed them the clip that we are talking about here.
My point about no context was that I didn’t tell them my feelings on it, nor the feelings of others. Just the clip, nothing more.
The punchline is where he says “Nega, nega, nega, nega, nega”) Did you watch the clip
And they had reactions of surprise, not seizures. Talk about some wholecloth fabrications.
Do you have to grin to deliver a punchline? I’ve never liked comics that laughed at their own jokes.
It was said that this is how he has taught this unit in the past. I know a bunch of teachers that have a little joke as part of their material that they have told so many times at this point that they barely even notice it going by.
The presentation was exactly how I would present, "In Iowa, they might say ‘that, that, that, that’, in Ohio, they may say, “Bitte, bitte, bitte, bitte”, and in New York, they might say, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He knew it sounded like a slur. There is no question about that. To say otherwise is to claim that he was an idiot.
No, what you are saying is that if we don’t all make the knee jerk reaction of unanimously condemning the dean and the students, without knowing the context of the situation, and based only on a biased point of view, then the alt-righties have a point.
You complain that the dean jumped to a conclusion, but here you are, doing the same.
And I disagree. I think that you are doing exactly what they want. Bullying people into not speaking up when they have concerns. Insulting and condemning them for bringing something that bothered them to the administration.
You are doing so with no knowledge, no context, and no information other than what they have chosen show you in the framing that they chose to give.
The next time when I a professor does specifically and intentionally throw out racist slurs at his students, this will be remembered, and people will be hesitant to bring forward their concerns for fear of being excoriated by knee jerk reactionaries like yourself.
If you have some reason to think that they had something against this professor, and were out to get him, and therefore have reason to believe that their concerns were not raised in good faith, then present that argument.
Otherwise, you are demanding that USC break their own rules of conduct by demanding that these students be punished for bringing forth a good faith complaint.
If you want to fault the Dean, them maybe, but I still don’t think that you know nearly enough of the situation to make that judgement. If you want to condemn the students, then you are making a demand that will create a chilling effect for those who speak out about racism.
And then dismiss them if we don’t think that their experience matches our perceptions and expectations.
But that is exactly what you have done here. You have no context except this clip that the far right has chosen to bring out for you, and you are willing to pass judgement.
Let’s say that the dean said to the professor. “Hey, I see what you are doing here, but can you just throw in a word or two about the fact that other languages may include things that sound like slurs before throwing out words that sound like slurs?”
And the professor responds as many here have, demanding that these immature students be punished, and that he will not give “trigger warnings” to coddle the little snowflakes.
You don’t know the situation, you don’t know the context, you don’t know what other disciplinary actions have been taken against this professor, and yet, you have already formed a judgement and are demanding that all others agree with your judgement, else the righties win.
I disagree that we have enough context of knowledge of the incident to jump to such a conclusion.
100% this.
I do think that it is a good point that a professor of communication who is teaching how to effective communicate should be good at effectively communicating. I don’t see how that is controversial in the slightest.
You guys are ignoring that point like it’s something that you really want to ignore as it completely undercuts your argument.
I had considered wading in a couple times, but didn’t really want to specifically as I don’t think that this deserves the attention that it gets. But it was the demands that the students be punished for bringing up legitimate concerns (no scare quotes necessary) and the defense of the professor that he couldn’t have possibly have known how that would sound or who people might react to it that dragged me in. At that point, yeah, it was a little long, as there was quite a bit to respond to.
I have not attacked the professor. As I said, I don’t think that he was being racist or trying to trigger anyone. I think he just had a little joke that he had told over and over for years, and this is the first time he told it on video.
The baseless attacks would be on the students who brought forth a complaint in good faith, who are now being insulted, called immature and snowflakes, and that they shouldn’t be allowed to graduate without having to take extra classes, or be expelled form school altogether if they can’t handle it.
Your question is not really relevant, and is at best orthogonal to my argument. But if you are asking me what the professor should have done instead of just throwing out “nega, nega, nega, nega, nega”, then he could have chosen a different language as an example, or he could have lead up with another language before using Mandarin, or he could have at least mentioned that such words may sound offensive to English speakers.
We must punish the students, right?
and I honestly don’t understand why people are demanding universal condemnation and punishment of people that they have never met, have nothing to do with, and that they don’t know any context except what has been selectively chosen for them to see by right wing provocateurs trying to get them to have exactly that reaction.
I’d agree, but the worse would be to allow such knee jerk reactions calling for the universal condemnation of students and faculty without knowing the entirety of the story to stand unchallenged.
I ignored the story until it became obvious that doing so was not making it go away, and instead, I was just watching resentment and hatred fester, and I did feel the need to, even though it brings more attention to the story, ask people to actually slow down and look for the actual context, before rushing to judgement, as you have done.
I don’t really think that a thread on our messagebaord is going to make any changes one way or another with either the woke or the alt right. Questioning the rush to judgement does not give any ammo to anyone anywhere.
And that’s what I personally, with no more context than anyone else here has, think that he actually got suspended for. When told that that is what he should do in the future, if he reacted as many in this thread have, then I can see how the dean might have thought it best for him to take a bit of time off.
If nothing else, if he had such an attitude, would you trust him not to retaliate against the students he suspected brought the complaint forward?
Spent the first half of my life in food, spent the last 8 in dogs.
I’ve learned to pronounce those words very specifically.
But I do have clients, in front of their own kids, call their dog a shit-su. And then laugh.
But that is a good example. When I first started this gig, I was talking to my Mother about it, and when I mentioned shih tzu’s to her, she got a bit offended that I would use that word in her house(and she’s about as far from woke you can get without being in a medically induced coma). I learned to pronounce it better, rather than get offended that others take offense to it.
Right, which means that he knew what it sounded like. This was not the first time.
If someone had asked for an example of another language that had filler words, and he just replied with that, then that would be one thing. He wasn’t really thinking about how it would sound would be a perfectly valid defense.
But he chose this, he knew this, and he didn’t bother to point out that this was coming up. Why not? Because he expected that the bit of shock value would be amusing to some students and help to better remember the lesson. I bet many many of his past students couldn’t tell you what the definition of a filler word actually is, but they could tell you what it is in Mandarin.
And I think that the notion that he didn’t know what the aural similarity of neige to the English slur is completely fallacious.
Or, in previous years, it was not recorded. So the people that noted this didn’t really have a good way to either compare notes or report it. If a couple people look around, and say, “Did he just say what I think he said?” that doesn’t get as much traction as actually having video to review it.
That would be the best, I would agree.
Yes.
And I am perfectly willing to do such a thing. But, it has been hyped up by right wing sites, so does merit some discussion.
So, would you say that if next semester, after all of this, he gives exactly the same presentation in exactly the same way, he still did nothing wrong?
Would you say that, if this professor reacted to the complaint with even half the hostility shown in this thread, he should be expected to teach the rest of this semester without retaliating against the students that brought forth the complaint?
Yeah, and no one is saying this.
Or when Modelo Negra goes as out of fashion as Corona.
do you think that objecting to the shirt that eschrodinger pointed would be catering to English-centrism?
No, that’s not what the thread is all about. No one has said that, no one at all. Not a single person. If @Riemann is looking for conspiracy theories, this would be a good one.
Assuming that the video is as you say (I don’t do audio at work), then I would agree that the person doing the confronting is entirely in the wrong. Especially if going to South Korea, and not knowing this.
However, that is not even close to or relevant to the situation with the professor who chose to make his presentation the way he did.
And that’s exactly why the idiocy of these students should be called out for the immature nonsense that it is, and distinguished clearly from the reality of widespread racism.
You don’t strengthen any fight against real injustice by failing to discriminate false claims.
So, the story of the boy who cried wolf was a story of a boy who saw glowing eyes in the forest, called out to others, who yelled at him for disturbing them when they didn’t see a wolf?
And the next time he saw eyes in the treeline he kept his mouth shut.
Your analogy only works if you assume that these complaints were made in bad faith in an effort to get the professor in trouble. Do you have any evidence of this, or is it just a conspiracy theory?
The analogy isn’t perfect, because I don’t think their accusation was made (as with the fable) as a joke just to wind people up, of course. But the fact that their intent was not malicious does not mean that their accusation was not stupid, immature and based on no evidence whatsoever - those features are shared with the fable.
