The problem of cowering to and enabling SJW's

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...How does something being a juvenile comedy stop it from romanticizing over policing? Perhaps not in the way for kids, but the movie Team America can easily be called a juvenile comedy and is filled with political statements. Ace Ventura is a juvenile comedy and has a heap of unacceptable elements for the views of today.

Did the person in question say that Kindergarten Cop was like Birth of a Nation and Gone With The Wind beyond that they were movies? Kind of just sounded like the person said invoked the names of the other movies just to say that saying something is just a movie is not a defense. Gone with the Wind would probably be the more apt comparison as a movie that might not have meant anything racist at the time, but could be viewed more problematic now.

How does something being a juvenile comedy stop it from romanticizing over policing? Perhaps not in the way for kids, but the movie Team America can easily be called a juvenile comedy and is filled with political statements. Ace Ventura is a juvenile comedy and has a heap of unacceptable elements for the views of today.

The University of Southern California has placed a communications professor on leave after a group of black MBA candidates threatened to drop his class rather than “endure the emotional exhaustion of carrying on with an instructor that disregards cultural diversity and sensitivities” following the instructor’s use, while teaching, of a Chinese word that sounds like a racial slur.

Greg Patton, a professor at the university’s Marshall School of Business, was giving a lecture about the use of “filler words” in speech during a recent online class when he used the word in question, saying, “If you have a lot of ‘ums and errs,’ this is culturally specific, so based on your native language. Like in China, the common word is ‘that, that, that.’ So in China it might be ‘nèi ge, nèi ge, nèi ge.’”

In an August 21 email to university administration obtained by National Review, students accused the professor of pronouncing the word like the N-word “approximately five times” during the lesson in each of his three communication classes and said he “offended all of the Black members of our Class.”

The students, who identified themselves as “Black MBA Candidates c/o 2022” wrote that they had reached out to Chinese classmates as they were “appalled” by what they had heard.

“It was confirmed that the pronunciation of this word is much different than what Professor Patton described in class,” the students wrote. “The word is most commonly used with a pause in between both syllables. In addition, we have lived abroad in China and have taken Chinese language courses at several colleges and this phrase, clearly and precisely before instruction is always identified as a phonetic homonym and a racial derogatory term, and should be carefully used, especially in the context of speaking Chinese within the social context of the United States.”

The students accused the professor of displaying “negligence and disregard” in using the word and said he “conveniently stop[ped] the zoom recording right before saying the word,” calling his actions calculated.

“Our mental health has been affected,” the group continued. “It is an uneasy feeling allowing him to have the power over our grades. We would rather not take his course than to endure the emotional exhaustion of carrying on with an instructor that disregards cultural diversity and sensitivities and by extension creates an unwelcome environment for us Black students.”

The students added that the incident “has impacted our ability to focus adequately on our studies.”

“No matter what way you look at this, the word was said multiple times today in three different instances and has deeply affected us. In light of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the recent and continued collective protests and social awakening across the nation, we cannot let this stand,” the group concluded, before calling for an immediate remedy to the situation.

In response, Dean Geoff Garrett apologized for the professor’s use of a “Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English,” in an email on August 24 obtained by National Review, saying “understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students.”

“I am deeply saddened by this disturbing episode that has caused such anguish and trauma,” he said.

The dean announced that a new instructor would immediately take over instruction for the remainder of the class.

Two days later, in an email to members of the USC Marshall Graduate Student Association Executive Board, Patton apologized, explaining that he has taught the course for 10 years and had been given the example by several international students years ago.

“The inclusion is part of a deep and sustained effort at inclusion as I have reached out to find and include many international, global, diverse, female, broad and inclusive leadership examples and illustrations to enhance communication and interpersonal skill in our global workplace,” he said.

“I have since learned there are regional differences, yet I have always heard and pronounced the word as ‘naaga’ rhyming with ‘dega,'” the professor wrote.

He added that the transcript of the session records his pronunciation as “naga” and that his pronunciation of the word comes from time spent in Shanghai.

“Given the difference in sounds, accent, context and language, I did not connect this in the moment to any English words and certainly not any racial slur,” he wrote.

“Unfortunately messages have circulated that suggest ill intent, extensive previous knowledge, inaccurate events and these are factually inaccurate. Fortunate [sic] we have transcripts, audio, video, tracking of messages and a 25 year record,” he wrote. “I have strived to best prepare students with Global, real-world and applied examples and illustrations to make the class content come alive and bring diverse voices, situations and experiences into the classroom.”

He said he had received positive feedback on the lesson in years past but accepted blame for failing “to realize all the many different additional ways that a particular example may be heard across audiences members based on their own lived experiences.”

In a statement to Campus Reform, USC said Patton “agreed to take a short term pause while we are reviewing to better understand the situation and to take any appropriate next steps.”

According to a brief bio on the school’s website, Patton is “an expert in communication, interpersonal and leadership effectiveness” who has received “numerous teaching awards, been ranked as one of the top teaching faculty at USC and helped USC Marshall achieve numerous #1 worldwide rankings for Communication and Leadership skill development.”

“Professor Patton has extensive international experience, has trained, coached and mentored thousands of leaders worldwide, and created scores of successful leadership programs,” the bio adds.

I guess it's probably not safe to say negro anymore (the Spanish word for black) or refer to the country of Niger in Africa.

If you pronounce the African country right it shouldn't be a problem,it was a French colony named after the eponymous river.

"Neejzair" does that pronounciation of a French word make sense,it's not pronounced the same as the English slur.Don't worry about that.If your really speaking a Latin based language saying negro or negra or negros shouldn't be an issue.As long as the word is not used in a English sentence.

Remember you also have the country of Nigeria also named after the Neejzair river.

I’ve always pronounced it “NYE-jer”

The Girl Scouts deleted a tweet late Wednesday congratulating Justice Amy Coney Barrett for being the fifth woman named to the Supreme Court after social media backlash primarily from the left, with the decision to delete the post also sparking outrage.

“Congratulations Amy Coney Barrett on becoming the 5th woman appointed to the Supreme Court since its inception in 1789,” the 108-year-old organization wrote in a tweet that included pictures of the four other women to sit on the high court: Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The post was also shared on the organization's Facebook page with a note saying, “Girl Scouts of the USA is a nonpolitical, nonpartisan organization."

"We are neither red nor blue, but Girl Scout GREEN. We are here to lift up girls and women," it continued. “If you would like to debate partisan politics—keep scrolling."

Backlash from progressives, including from Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), quickly ensued, prompting the deletion.

The Girl Scouts explained in removing the post that it "was quickly viewed as a political and partisan statement which was not our intent."

After the posts were deleted, the organization received additional backlash for bowing to what many described as a social media mob, with journalist Megyn Kelly calling the decision "pathetic."

Looks like this story had a happy ending: USC concludes professor’s controversial comments did not violate policy, By: Guilherme Guerreiro, James Garvey, Arantza Popo, Kenneth Kim, and Celine Maia Mendiola, USC Annenberg Media, September 29: "The investigation concluded days after 3 student groups issued a statement criticizing the university’s handling of the controversy."

For an overview of the entire story, see How a Mild-Mannered USC Professor Accidentally Ignited Academia’s Latest Culture War by Jason McGahan, Los Angeles Magazine, October 21, 2020: "Dr. Greg Patton’s use of a Chinese word that sounds like a slur to American ears led to calls for his dismissal."
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The popularity of books about race, from Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist to Robin D’Angelo’s White Fragility, shows no signs of abating. The latest entry, Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America, purports to be a history of the havoc wreaked by white men. In it, author Ijeoma Oluo describes her hatred of white cowboys and white football team owners and white Bernie Bros and something she calls white “muscular Christianity.” For every problem in America, past and present, Oluo has identified a single villain: “That source is white male supremacy.”

According to Oluo, it is everywhere, and it’s personal. In a single paragraph she leaps from complaining about “the white men who talked over me in meetings” to “the white male lead in a movie who sits in his cubicle and laments his lot,” and on to “the white men wearing swastikas in Charlottesville, angry about their own failures and shouting about the people they blamed for them.”

The book is less social analysis than it is fan service for those already steeped in anti-racism ideology.

Oluo embraces a line of argument that has gained in popularity with the mainstreaming of critical race theory: This reasoning blames “systemic racism” for any human challenge that doesn’t produce ideologically approved results. Outcomes not directly proportional by race in C-suites across the country? Blame systemic racism. Fifty years of institutionalized affirmative action programs still not yielding perfect proportionality in higher education? Blame systemic racism. Annoying male colleague interrupts you at a work meeting? Systemic racism! Even completely mundane observations about a white male politician like Joe Biden (he changed his policy position on busing to maintain power), when run through Oluo’s race theory grist mill, becomes proof of systemic racism, rather than what it really is: how politicians operate.

Of course, this isn’t a game everyone is allowed to play: No one would publish a book by a white man that blamed complicated social problems on the behavior of a few “angry black women,” for example. Nor should they; such sweeping and simplistic conclusions about a racial group are textbook examples of racism and would add little value to the public conversation.

Her exhaustion stems from having “to work twice as hard” as white men, she says, adding, “There’s a violence to that, even in the everyday occurrence—knowing that you can go to work and never be appreciated for what you do, or that you’re going to have to keep picking up the messes of white men who are never held accountable.”

Her cavalier invocation of violence suggests a stunning lack of self-awareness. She describes an enviable experience—“an idyllic women’s writing retreat”—where she was given time and space to work free from the stresses of day-to-day life. And yet, at the end of each day, how did she and her fellow female writers choose to spend their time unwinding? “We talked about sh***y dudes,” she writes. “We talked about how much time we had spent writing about sh***y white dudes . . . There is an abundance of bad guys to be found just about everywhere, and we can’t seem to stop talking about them.”

Since Oluo’s book adopts the tone of score-keeping, it’s only fair to note the achievements as well as the harms of some these white men; they didn’t bequeath only mediocrity, after all. The nation’s Founding Fathers created a system of government that allowed for later challenges to the institution of slavery and women’s disenfranchisement, for the expansion of equal rights, free speech, free association and freedom of religion. Generations of engineers, inventors, soldiers, ministers, and fathers, however mediocre and white Oluo might find them, fought for and protected those rights, often at the cost of their own lives.

Though a savvy marketing choice, making her book about white men misses a simpler truth: Most of us, regardless of race or sex, are mediocre. Excellence is rare, which is why it should be celebrated regardless of where we find it.

And what’s wrong with mediocrity? America’s promise has long been the opportunity it gives people to do the best they can with the talents they’ve been given, and then the right to be left alone to enjoy the rewards of their hard work. A nation of responsible, hard-working citizens, however mediocre Oluo might judge them, is still far freer than the aristocracies and rigid caste systems of the Old World.

Evidently, it’s now a rite of passage (or a masochistic thrill) for elite white liberals to reject that promise and instead “do the work” of reading books denouncing white people en masse. Those who write these books and those who read them form a dysfunctional, closed circle wherein criticism is impossible—if you object to Oluo’s (or Kendi’s or D’Angelo’s) claims about injustice, then your objections are themselves proof of their claims of your racism.

Yes and No. The professor while not fired did have to leave teaching that material. More importantly it further demonstrated that school gives in easily to political pressure. On a good note it did suggest that a most blacks are not for woke ideology and that Chinese students are tired of being punished for doing well.