Sometimes I read something so extreme, so scary, I really do wonder what the world has come to.
From Wikipedia..
Niggardly (noun: niggard) is an adjective meaning stingy or miserly, derived from the Old Norse verb nigla, meaning “to fuss about small matters”.
Unless you’re real stoopid. I mean, proper dumb stoopid…
On January 15, 1999, David Howard, a white aide to Anthony A. Williams, the black mayor of Washington, D.C., United States, used the word in reference to a budget. This apparently upset one of his black colleagues (identified by Howard as Marshall Brown), who incorrectly interpreted it as a racial slur and lodged a complaint. As a result, on January 25 Howard tendered his resignation, and Williams accepted it.
Also…
University of Wisconsin, Madison. At a February meeting of the Faculty Senate, Amelia Rideau, a junior English major and vice chairwoman of the Black Student Union, told the group how a professor teaching Chaucer had used the word niggardly. Rideau later said she was unaware of the related Washington, D.C., controversy which came to light just the week before. She said the professor continued to use the word even after she told him that she was offended. “I was in tears, shaking,” she told the faculty. “It’s not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid.”
Check that last line again:
“It’s not up to the rest of the class to decide whether my feelings are valid“. That combination of ignorance and the ability to make and take offence where this is or was none divides people and races. The idea that the whole of society has to kowtow to the lowest, the worst, the dumbest in society says everything about what the world has become.
But that’s not the only word to fall foul of the dumb brigade
Picnic anyone?
Things are not peachy on the campus of SUNY/Albany. The university wanted to honour baseball legend Jackie Robinson by having a picnic. But the university’s equity office said this must not occur because the word “picnic” referred originally to gatherings held to lynch Blacks. In fact, as one of their own English professors (rather less committed to historical revisionism than RMC’s Dr. Robinson) pointed out, the word “picnic” actually comes from a 17th-century French word that denotes a party at which everyone brings food. But Zaheer Mustafa, the equity officer, nevertheless decreed that “picnic” not be used because “the point is — the word offends.” So the university decided to call it an “outing.” Then, homosexual students took objection to that, and SUNY decided to publicize the event without using any noun to describe it.
How come it’s always at American Universities??
Still as a rule of thumb, we can always get down to the nitty gritty, can’t we? Surely the only person who can’t tell the difference between a plant and an animal would be offended.
Categories: political_correctness
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