When Racism Slips Into Everyday Speech

[Xithras]

32. I remember how aggravated I got when that happened.

I had just started teaching occasional adjunct classes in California when the thing happened at SUNY. I still remember the huge debate it sparked at colleges nationwide, and the overwhelming consensus of the faculty my college was that SUNY dropped the ball badly. As educators, our job is to EDUCATE. When confronted with something that is an absolute falsehood, our priority should be to set the record straight so that students are arguing from positions of fact and knowledge, instead of positions built on falsehoods and ignorance.

By decreeing that "picnic" was offensive and banning the word, the university allowed ignorance to win. If a student is offended by a word because they have a false understanding of a words origins and historical usage, the response of an educator should be to EDUCATE them about the true history of the word to help relieve their offense. Instead, SUNY chose to cave to the offended and allowed the ignorance to perpetuate.

Nobody has a right to deny facts, history, and truth simply because they are offended by it.