By Erik Dolson
Grade school in upper middle class, exclusively White, post-war-rich America was tough. There was teasing by fellow students. Some kids had that birthday advantage, so were more physically mature with athletic ability. Even the name of my grade school, Forest Hills, had an ominous aura that amplified fear of poison oak and nettles.
Oh, Liberals, when did we become so fragile?
The examples are many, but let’s just focus on the most obvious and divisive.
A week ago, on Sunday, March 21, a White woman in New York refused to wear a COVID mask in a public bakery. When an employee refused to serve her, she called him a “bitch-assed nigger.” (I use the word fully spelled out here because this is about language, and I do not intend it as a slur. From here on, I will use asterisks (*) in place of the two “g’s” so those who swoon at the sight of a written word will not be impacted.)
Although it’s difficult for us Liberals to pass up an opportunity for indignation, let’s ignore the misogyny or body-shaming of “bitch-assed,” and focus instead on the hateful use of the word “ni**er.” I’ll leave it to others to debate if the woman, Stephanie Denaro, is a racist. She claims to be married to a Black man and her children appeared to be bi-racial. She might just be filled with self-hatred for all I know, or care.
What’s important here is that she broke no laws and will face no consequences.
Contrast this with other recent events.
The day before, on March 20, dean of the law school at City University of New York, Mary Lu Bilek, announced her early retirement after likening herself to a “slaveholder” in a meeting concerning race and tenure.
I don’t have the entire context of that discussion, but it’s important that, with Ms. Bilek as dean, the law school had been named “the most diverse in the country.” She has a lifetime record of caring about and promoting racial justice, and decades ago recognized the impact that standardized tests had on low-income students.
But, now she’s gone. Let’s move on.
Last month, Donald G. McNeil Jr., a reporter at The New York Times, resigned “under pressure” because in 2019, while serving as an expert during a NYT-sponsored trip for high school students to Peru, used the word “ni**er” in a conversation about racist language.
McNeil obviously was not using the word as a racist. But, after 45 years at the paper, including work in 60 countries, widely respected journalism on science and the COVID epidemic, he was pressured to resign. It has been said that McNeil might also have been gruff to other staff at the NYT, but then again, he’s a news reporter. Truth hurts. It used to come with the job.
Now he’s gone. Let’s move on.
Two professors at Georgetown Law school lost their jobs this month as a result of one expressing her “angst” that some of her Black students made up a disproportionate number of those at the bottom of her class: “… it drives me crazy… so I feel bad.” The speaker, law professor Sandra Sellers, was fired. The law professor she was speaking to on Zoom, David Batson, submitted his resignation because, while he did not respond directly, he appeared to nod his head while Sellers was speaking.
These four examples are of people losing their employment after DECADES of furthering the interests of minorities.
Let’s circle back to Stephanie Denaro, the nasty piece of work who called a bakery worker a “bitch-assed ni**er.” Surely her rant is a more significant offense than an attempted teaching moment, or inadvertent characterization of role, or concern expressed about class participation.
Did Denaro lose her job? Was family services called on behalf of her children? At this point, her hateful language appears not to have earned her the slightest negative consequence. (Spare me arguments that she suffered humiliation or social media condemnation). Because it was legal.
Liberals, it’s one thing when we indulge in cancel culture over absurd “micro-aggressions,” but we do not “own” the English language. We do not have the right to scrub words out of other people’s mouths. Judgements about the “offense” of racist language must take into account the intent of the speaker, and the context in which words are used, without someone claiming the entitlement of hurt feelings.
I remember still with awe that day long ago when Mikey complained to Mrs. Mitchell, our first grade teacher, that Davey and Eddie were calling him bad names. The country’s turmoil and sacrifice of World War II was for her a fresh memory.
“You just tell them that ‘sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me,’ ” Mrs. Mitchell said, then she called us in from recess and taught us how to read.