In a statement on Wednesday, the group says she used the word without euphemisms to describe her work removing books with racial epithets from grade school libraries.
Slossberg says she used the word as it appeared in a children’s book, and she was trying to convey why the word has no place in society. The senator says she has since sent a formal apology to the club.
The club says the use of the word is “reprehensible” and “unjustifiable” regardless of the context.
What? Seriously? “Unjustifiable regardless of context”? Even uttering the word “to describe her work removing books with racial epithets from grade school libraries”? And “using the word as it appeared in a children’s book” that she was condemning?
I’m sorry. This is nuts. Mindless nuts.
Is this really news? She apologized and the apology was accepted.
Move on.
I don’t see the part where the apology was accepted. Declaring the conduct “reprehensible and unjustifiable” regardless of the context falls somewhat short of “accepting the apology.”
Context is everything. As Jew, I recoil at the word kike. But if it is used to describe what anti-Semites said about me or one of my people, that is entirely different.
Political correctness that becomes hypersensitivity is not only censorship, but provides room for the haters to do their work.
according to the speech police, you are reprehensible, because, regardless of context, you did not use the term “the k word” … this sounds like a parody of political correctness run amok
The University of Connecticut College Democrats said she used the word to describe her work removing books with racial epithets from grade school libraries.
So, she’s talking to college students about her work to get books that contain offensive language out of grade school libraries, something I assume the college snowflakes would agree with. And they complain about her having the audacity to actually say, so as to give an example, one of the words that is in the grade school books. These college democrats are going to find out why someone like Trump won - it wasn’t just the racists who voted for him, but people who just shake their head at this kind of thing.
You said it!
The club says the use of the word is “reprehensible” and “unjustifiable” regardless of the context
Ummm. No.
Context matters. Always.
If we follow this logic then when Trump says “I am Making America Great Again” we must accept he is doing that, even if he is saying that while signing a bill ordering the military to drop nuclear bombs on the 5 largest cities in the country. Because, context doesn’t matter, right?
I don’t either.
For anyone else wondering, she used the “N” word.
My 18 year old son who is white like I am played a couple of his favorite rap son recently for me and my wife, and I still can’t understand black folks being OK using the N word when, assuming this is the word this woman used, if a white person uses it to tell folks they have removed it from something, get bitched out like they used it to insult black folks.
I just don’t understand this. I mean do hispanic folks refer to each other when they are talking among themselves as wetbacks or some other derogatory racial name?
If you don’t like non-blacks calling you a slur, why is it ok if you use it? I don’t understand the logical.
Sorry, but this story doesn’t sound right.
off-topic.
and old news.
I sometimes call my kid a “stinker” and I mean it affectionately, but I would never tell some other parent his kid was a stinker, because he would have no idea how to take it. and “stinker” is a pretty mild epithet. context matters. if subgroups of the society want to reclaim words to de-fang them, that’s their right, but it does not mean that those words mean the same thing coming from part of the greater society, let alone from people who have the power.
Absolutely. Outside of a context, words are just scribbles on a page, or noise in the air.
Yeah, ¨The ´N´ word¨ is annoying, but the writer leaving the reader to guess is a bit much. .
My 16 year-old daughter gets upset with if I even quote a lyric of a song she plays that has ¨nigga¨ in it. She argues, with some justification I suppose, that it is a word that is only non-offensive in an appropriate cultural context. I tell her that I would never walk up to some black kid and use it, but that it is, in the end, just a word, and that taboos are never appropriate when talking about language.
Exactly what i was about to say. well said.
If I say I’m an effing idiot, that’s okay. If I say you’re an effing idiot, it’s not.
there is the aroma of bovine fecal matter surrounding this - intensely - and I will not use the term “political correctness” because that is nonsense of a different sort.
Now since the TPM article was so sanitized that it had virtually no facts, a bit of searching was in order - and the following popped up & seems to provide some interesting & informative context.
“The UConn College Democrats invited Sen. Gayle Slossberg, a Milford Democrat and one of three Democrats who voted in favor of a state budget proposed by Republicans, to speak on Oct. 3 about the impact of the state budget on the university.”
sort of makes one wonder if the agenda was already framed & that something negative was likely to come out of this interaction - Slossberg may have thought that she was coming to engage in substantive discourse on issues related to education - but there may have been some in the audience poised to seize upon anything to visit some retribution on Slossberg for her vote in favor of a state budget proposed by Republicans.
Context does matter - and while the “n-word” is abhorrent and has no place in civil discourse, it would seem that the efforts to escort it out of day-to-day language are not well served by faux indignation over instances where it is uttered in a more clinical discussion of its removal. It is reprehensible and it has no place in children’s books - and when engaged in an adult dialog on the subject, in an academic setting, and discussing the identification of the offending word - it would seem that the actual pronouncement of the word, while unsettling, would in no way equate to an intentional personal slur or an insult.
Fair enough.
What a pathetic and misleading headline, worthy of Fox News.