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cimoreneThis post at Language Log discusses a philosophical paper on the semantics of racial epithets ("The S. of R.E." by Christopher Hom, available online in its entirety via the link) which included the following illustrative anecdote as a footnote:
One of the first things I notice is that the teacher - the white person - is genuinely mistaken: she doesn't realise what she has said. I'm fairly certain that it didn't remotely occur to that foot-in-mouthing teacher that her utterance begs the question of the existence of "n-----s" as distinct from black people. It assumes that they exist, that they are undesirable, and that good (or should I say... articluate?) black people also exist who are not dumb or (impoverished/pitiable? It's not clear which is intended). In paraphrase, then, she said to that roomful of black kids, "It seems like you're trying to convince me you are the bad, dumb, lazy kind of black people, but I'm not fooled - I still believe that you're the good, worthwhile kind of black people underneath!" (She probably meant to say, and in fact thought she said, something like "You're acting just like the stereotype of black people as naturally savage and dumb, but I know you're just being assholes" - which isn't unproblematic, but is at least slightly better than what she said.)
This is not a bad characterisation of [part of] what happened in RaceFail09. The expected response in both cases was "Why, thank you, Whitey! I'm so inspired by your faith in me in spite of my undeserving bad behaviour!" In RaceFail09 at least - I can't speak for the Arkansas teacher - there was a lot of shock going around that instead the response was essentially, "You're fired."
In the original EB-Avalon's Willow round especially, a racial slur was mistakenly delivered, EB was fired, and she responded initially with regret, an admission of wrong, an apology, and a promise to try not to carelessly deliver racial slurs in future. (Maybe the teacher did try to make it all about her hurt feelings instead of apologising for having accidentally offended people, which is the popular response to being called out on racism, though it wasn't EB's first move. But since her credit was good enough with her students that they campaigned on her behalf, I'm guessing she probably regretted offending them.) In fact, after her apology EB was at first, er, re-hired: a lot of people expressed their appreciation for her reply to AW's open letter, both to her directly and elsewhere in the discussion.
If RaceFail09 is anything to go by, though, I have to guess that once she was re-hired, the Arkansas teacher was dogged for months by fanmail from white supremacists, the local newspapers were deluged with incoherent and angry defenses of her full of deliberate racist slurs by offended white people, and a bunch of her personal friends made a lot of noise in public, about how if they were dumb enough to fail to grasp that her point was actually exactly the opposite of a racist slur, then they obviously were poor/dumb/[insert a long string of increasingly-offensive stereotypes of black people here]. I can only hope that, unlike EB, the teacher told her friends to shut up because they were just making themselves look bad. (Also, probably by the time a few months had passed the incident was referred to at the Junior League or wherever as "that time when poor, slim, blonde Miss Smith was attacked by that crazy mob of ungrateful non-white people with pitchforks and wearing scary masks.")
For example, a white, Arkansas teacher who was exasperated over the poor behaviour of her sixth grade class told the students, all of whom were black: "I think you're trying to make me think you're a bunch of poor, dumb n-----s, and I don't think that." The students told their parents about the remark, and she was promptly fired by the school district. Interestingly, she was reinstated after a petition of support was presented to the school board by the students at her school. For more details, see "Black Students Forgive Teacher's Mistaken Slur", New York Times (October 17, 1988).
One of the first things I notice is that the teacher - the white person - is genuinely mistaken: she doesn't realise what she has said. I'm fairly certain that it didn't remotely occur to that foot-in-mouthing teacher that her utterance begs the question of the existence of "n-----s" as distinct from black people. It assumes that they exist, that they are undesirable, and that good (or should I say... articluate?) black people also exist who are not dumb or (impoverished/pitiable? It's not clear which is intended). In paraphrase, then, she said to that roomful of black kids, "It seems like you're trying to convince me you are the bad, dumb, lazy kind of black people, but I'm not fooled - I still believe that you're the good, worthwhile kind of black people underneath!" (She probably meant to say, and in fact thought she said, something like "You're acting just like the stereotype of black people as naturally savage and dumb, but I know you're just being assholes" - which isn't unproblematic, but is at least slightly better than what she said.)
This is not a bad characterisation of [part of] what happened in RaceFail09. The expected response in both cases was "Why, thank you, Whitey! I'm so inspired by your faith in me in spite of my undeserving bad behaviour!" In RaceFail09 at least - I can't speak for the Arkansas teacher - there was a lot of shock going around that instead the response was essentially, "You're fired."
In the original EB-Avalon's Willow round especially, a racial slur was mistakenly delivered, EB was fired, and she responded initially with regret, an admission of wrong, an apology, and a promise to try not to carelessly deliver racial slurs in future. (Maybe the teacher did try to make it all about her hurt feelings instead of apologising for having accidentally offended people, which is the popular response to being called out on racism, though it wasn't EB's first move. But since her credit was good enough with her students that they campaigned on her behalf, I'm guessing she probably regretted offending them.) In fact, after her apology EB was at first, er, re-hired: a lot of people expressed their appreciation for her reply to AW's open letter, both to her directly and elsewhere in the discussion.
If RaceFail09 is anything to go by, though, I have to guess that once she was re-hired, the Arkansas teacher was dogged for months by fanmail from white supremacists, the local newspapers were deluged with incoherent and angry defenses of her full of deliberate racist slurs by offended white people, and a bunch of her personal friends made a lot of noise in public, about how if they were dumb enough to fail to grasp that her point was actually exactly the opposite of a racist slur, then they obviously were poor/dumb/[insert a long string of increasingly-offensive stereotypes of black people here]. I can only hope that, unlike EB, the teacher told her friends to shut up because they were just making themselves look bad. (Also, probably by the time a few months had passed the incident was referred to at the Junior League or wherever as "that time when poor, slim, blonde Miss Smith was attacked by that crazy mob of ungrateful non-white people with pitchforks and wearing scary masks.")
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(no subject)
Date: 9 Feb 2009 10:09 pm (UTC)"No, no, I meant 'fag' in a GOOD way!"
Date: 9 Feb 2009 10:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 Feb 2009 10:34 pm (UTC)I am interested in the split between semantic POV and pragmatic POV -- I'm kind of wary of people thinking it can be a either/or thing and I'm swayed by the semantic analysis because I believe, ultimately, it can incorporate (in a technical sense) the pragmatic analysis in a way that pragmatics can't do the other way round as pragmatics divorces itself from everything but the context and thus becomes blind to everything else. Which! From a philosophical linguistic view point is ridiculous. Which just really goes to prove nothing but the fact that I don't believe in pure pragmatics as being a satisfactory account for the perception and production of discourse. heh!
(no subject)
Date: 10 Feb 2009 08:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Feb 2009 08:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Feb 2009 09:38 am (UTC)I think that the dissonance in the perception of how everything went down in the different communities has something to do with how the participants think of the relationships between the speech communities. I'm pretty sure that the White Professional SF Writers People/fans had a different construct of the relationship/hierarchy/power dynamic than the rest of participants; it was pretty clear in the way most of the language from that side of the discussion came as "missives" that weren't there to engage in debate. Uh. I've run out of time for this this morning but I am interested in this! And I was interested in your analysis, not dismissing it out of hand!