Quote of the day
QOTD is from Breda, on the use of the term “racist”:
This sort of thing has happened frequently enough that the epithet has lost all its sting. I see it now for what it is, a knee-jerk reaction to some perceived slight combined with a lack of better vocabulary.
I’ve often said that when someone calls you a racist, the appropriate response is to laugh. Anything else just perpetuates the behavior. And I think the term has sort of become the equivalent of “the N word” or calling someone a fascist or “commie”: semantically null and without meaning.
A few years ago, my wife was teaching in the South Bronx. She had a parent complain to the principal that “Mrs. Newbie” was not being fair to her son, and perhaps it was racially motivated. She went to sit down with the principal and the parent. She ran into the mother of one of her former students, who said “Hello, Miss. Maidenname” (We had gotten married in the meantime and she had changed her name.) They had a bit of a chat, and then the both of them walk into the principals office. Mother turns to her son, slaps him upside the head and says “Boy, you are in a lot of trouble. You didn’t tell me it was Miss Maidenname!” Seems the mom didn’t realize that my wife was the one she was accusing of racism. Needless to say, it went nowhere.
So the moral of the story…develop more creative insults. And laugh if you are accused of racism.
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Do your part!
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