Use/Mention distinction and ‘racist’ speech

by Harry on December 3, 2003

Via Critical Mass I found this old (by blogosphere standards) news story about racist speech. The Cavalier and the various officials they quote all say that the accused employee used a racist term in the following sentence:

bq. I can’t believe in this day and age that there’s a sports team in our nation’s capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called N—s would be to blacks.

But, despite the Cavalier’s failure to insert quotation marks, it is completely obvious that he did not use the racist term; he mentioned it. I know that quotation marks are now used in standard public writing more or less “randomly”. But most readers surely understand when a word is being mentioned rather than used. Don’t they? Julian Bond (whom I greatly admire) apparently

bq. called for the employee to make a public apology and take sensitivity training. “My first impulse is that this should be a dismissible infraction — but free speech protections I hold dear tell me that shouldn’t be so,” Bond wrote, adding that the administration “ought to disavow such language.”

Disavow the mention of racist terms? Bang goes the segment of my Contemporary Moral Issues course on hate speech codes.
[When I used to mention racist terms by uttering them in this segment of the course rather than writing them on the board, one student raised his hand and, with a look of genuine mystification, said he couldn’t see anything wrong with calling someone a ‘Kite’. That’s when I started using the board]

[Update: I’ve looked at the URL Dan L below recommends and find it utterly confusing. Help me out someone.]

{ 22 comments }

1

Jimmy Doyle 12.03.03 at 9:05 pm

This story is really amazing. I’m currently visiting at U.Va; believe it or not, there was a letter to the Cavalier the next day complaining about the fact that the *Cavalier* had printed the dread word. It strongly reminded me of the scene in the Life of Brian about stoning to death anyone who says the word ‘Jehovah.’ (The High Priest ends up getting stoned, because he utters the word in the course of outlawing it.)

2

Dan L 12.03.03 at 9:11 pm

See below for an important subtlety in the facts of the situation. The supsect quotation may be an after the fact explanation of the context of a more ambiguous usage.

http://www.discriminations.us/storage/002312.html

3

david 12.03.03 at 9:40 pm

Julian Bond is very smart, and these types of things are frequently misreported (“there go those liberal professors again! And look, this one’s black!”). I suspect that happened here.

Though I’m sure Yglesias and Tapped will be going after Bond once again, on the principle that you have to gaurd against associating yourself with those damn identity politics people somehow. It will be a real shame if Bond deserves it as much as the first take suggests.

4

John Rosenberg 12.04.03 at 12:02 am

I’m the author of the DISCRIMINATIONS post (http://www.discriminations.us/storage/002312.html) that Dan L recommended (thanks, Dan), and I’d be happy to try to help you out if I knew which part of it you didn’t understand. You might want to check out an article in today’s (Tuesday’s) Cavalier Daily by student columnist Eric Wang that I linked in an Update to my post.

5

p mac 12.04.03 at 12:51 am

First they outlaw consensual cannibal-murder; next thing you know it they’ll be outlawing homosexual sodomy!

6

Matt Weiner 12.04.03 at 1:45 am

From John Rosenberg’s post, it seems as though the passage Harry quotes was not the one uttered by the accused employee. Rather it was uttered by R. Edward Howell, president of the medical center, in paraphrasing the employee.

Bond isn’t calling for the disciplining of Howell, who uttered the sentence that mentions the n-word. None of us–except maybe Jimmy, since he’s on the spot–knows exactly what the employee did utter, but it’s possible that he used the term rather than mentioning it, or that it fell into some middle territory. So it’s not clear to me that Bond is condemning someone for simply mentioning the slur.

7

harry 12.04.03 at 1:48 am

John, the reason I’m confused is that Dan L intimated that your post would indicate that the word had been used in an offensive way. But it does nothing of the sort. If it was used in an offensive way then its use is ntohing compared with the scandal of what is a massive cover up. If the supervisor said what he is actually quoted to have said he did not use the word but mentioned it, and was not offensive, right? So I’m not confused by your post so much as being pointed to it as a counter to the Cavalier report.

8

John Rosenberg 12.04.03 at 4:57 am

Harry, I like the distinction between use and mention. Based on the investigation by the head of the medical center, the supervisor (a she, by the way) definitely did not use the offending word in an offensive manner. Evidence of that is that, apparently (again, according to reports of the investigation), none of the employees who heard her comment felt that she was being offensive — although at least one of them must have felt that even mentioning the word was a no-no. The Cavalier Daily and its columnists have actually been rather good on this. Again, I recommend the Eric Wang column that I linked to in an Update to my post today.

9

drapetomaniac 12.04.03 at 8:53 am

The supsect quotation may be an after the fact explanation of the context of a more ambiguous usage.

Indeed. If the employees present were not offended, who were the “black employees of the UVa Medical Center [who] complained that their supervisor”? How does supposed incident of “hypersensitivity” connect to “other racially tinged incidents on campus in the past year, including an alleged racially motivated attack on a black student running for campus office”?

And what’s the literary term (apophasis?) for denying that you’re saying something as a way of saying it (like Mark Antony’s Friend, Romans speech) ?

And what’s so wrong with disavowing the mention of such words, the way that dashes or asterisks were used to indicate the name of god or swear words or whatever? On the contrary, I’ve known enough white people who take pleasure in “mentioning” certain Education
words wherever they can that I think a certain hesitancy would be salutary.

In short, I don’t think anyone should be fired for such usage regardless of what (s)he meant, but I’m skeptical about your readiness to turn this into a parable about political correctness. But hey, I rolled my eyes at the “(whom I greatly admire)” too.

10

Alex Bensky 12.04.03 at 5:57 pm

I think the employee in question should not only be fired, he should be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail. Can you imagine the emotional trauma caused to black students by the mere use of the word?

It is a word fraught with unhappy associations for them. That’s why young blacks would never use the word in their speech or have anything to do with musicians who do.

11

Matt Weiner 12.04.03 at 6:08 pm

Harry, I’ll try to make clearer the moral I draw from John R’s post. (BTW, from the time stamps I imagine that my earlier comment wasn’t up when you wrote yours.)
The sentence that you attribute to the employee,
“I can’t believe in this day and age that there’s a sports team in our nation’s capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called Niggers would be to blacks,”
was not actually uttered by that employee. It was uttered by R. Edward Howell, who said that the employee said “something like” that.
So I, at least, don’t know whether the employee actually used the word, perhaps with innocuous intent, or merely mentioned it.

I don’t think that it would necessarily be a sign of a coverup if the employee had used the word with innocuous intent, and Howell had paraphrased it to make it a mere mention. Howell might not distinguish between use with innocuous intent and mere mention; Bond might reasonably make that distinction.

12

david 12.04.03 at 6:24 pm

It seems that Bond was quoted from an email he sent. I haven’t found the context for it, but it looks like it was not meant to be a public statement. The most recent Cavalier Daily article was an opinion piece from what seems to be a typical Dartmouth Review style commenter, who claims “racism” is the new “communism” and leftists are the real McCarthyites. This person (Eric Wang, I think) notes that Bond has complained that the paper quoted his email without even calling for a direct comment from him, a courtesy that is seen by most to be a professional obligation, too.

So what’s the moral? I don’t know if Bond was wrong in whatever he said, wherever he said it. I feel certain that there are a number of liberal commentators, who I tend to identify with Tapped, who are on the lookout for black people who say things they disagree with. These same liberal commentators sound about as huffy as the Dartmouth Review types, so frustrated are they with black people bitching too much about tiny incidents and so masking the real problems (Kevin Drum’s point). Anybody know how this story got out? Or why Nick Confessore just keeps hearing about so many incidents like this? Or why liberals have such a need to distance themselves from identity politics? Anybody wonder why nobody asked Bond what he said, where he said it, or what have you? From my perspective, for a bunch of people well-attuned to the workings of the vast right wing conspiracy, these people sure can be quick to take part in it.

13

david 12.04.03 at 6:28 pm

Oops, meant also to say, tell more those who know more, my reading of what happened is as thin as the Cavalier Daily the day back from Thanksgiving, and I’ll stand by my conclusions even if the facts don’t match up because that’s how stubborn I am.

14

harry 12.04.03 at 6:39 pm

Thanks Matt — you’re right about the timing. I agree with everything that’s been said (and hinted at) about the unreliability of reporting. And that’s right, because of that we can’t be sure what was said or how. But there does seem to be a dilemma here. Either no offense was caused because the use or mention was inoffensive (Howell’s story), and there is no reason to censure the employee or subject her (sorry about gender misreading) to sensitivity training; or offense was caused (or should have been) in which case Howell is covering something up, and the primary ire should be directed at him for that. Admittedly there may be versions of the first horn on which it was a use not a mention (I can’t think of any off hand, but I’m willing to entertain suggestions), in which case my pedantic post is beside the point.

Can I mention why these kinds of event bother me so unreasonably much? I teach on a mainly white midwestern campus, and teach a large contemporary moral issues course in which I used to teach sections on campus hate speech codes and on affirmative action. The white students overwhelmingly despise racist language and don’t even need to see and argument for prohibiting it (excpet for a handful of politically enbgaged libertarians and eccentric leftists); they, similarly overwhelmingly oppose even the milder forms of affirmative action, and are stunningly ignorant of the salience of race to life-prospects in America. It is the only topic on which I would regularly receive deeply offensive essays, and I gave up teaching it because I found it so depressing — I have so many reservations about affrimative action myself, and they would dissolve in front of this unreasoned unwillingness to give up any privilege that mattered.

So, focus on racist language, especially when it is highly doubtful that it was racist, on campus, often seems to me to be highly diversionary.

15

Jimmy Doyle 12.04.03 at 8:05 pm

David:

“Or why liberals have such a need to distance themselves from identity politics?”

I don’t know…er…because ‘identity politics’ has become an absurd farrago of self-pitying wank? Because it gives the left a really bad name? Because it encourages resentment and ethnic factionalism on all sides? Or something like that?

16

david 12.04.03 at 9:19 pm

Not my point, Jimmy Doyle. People have attacked Bond for sending an email, whose context they don’t know. He made no public statement of any kind that anybody has found. So where is the “absurd farrago of self-pitying wank?” I think it’s in the self-indulgent hand-wringing about the “left” from whiners who bitch that black people keep bringing down the left by complaining about racist language. There is no story here, but it’s become a story, because people get so excited about any sign of the evil identity politics as practiced by NAACP members that they’ll go about suggesting that Julian freaking Bond pays no attention to the links between race and class in this country. So no, nothing like that at all. Your worrying about other people’s whining sounds a lot like whining to me.

17

John Smith 12.05.03 at 1:58 am

On Bond’s intention to make a public statement on the issue or not, I suspect he had a good idea that, given who he is and what he was saying, that, if he sent it to a faculty email list, it would be leaked PDQ! If he’s been misquoted, I reckon we’d have heard about his demands for a correction.

A further instalment suggests that we’ve far from got to the bottom of the story.

18

david 12.05.03 at 2:01 pm

AAAAH! So Bond is at fault cause he said something he meant to sound like a public statement from the chairman of the NAACP just because he knew his “mass email” would be leaked, because of “who he is and what he was saying.” But he didn’t say directly, because I guess he’s so diabolically crafty. Got me there. Until somebody gives the context in which the email is sent, which could probably be gotten by asking Bond directly, there’s no reason to run a political correctness is ruining the academy story. It just makes you look like Brent Bozell.

19

Matt Weiner 12.05.03 at 10:21 pm

Harry–
I agree that racial speech is a relatively small issue–but I feel that this story has become an urban legend that’s all over the blogosphere by now. Everyone seems to think that Bond called for the firing of the person who said the first thing you quoted, and that is not true.

From John Rosenberg’s site:
“Some black employees of the UVa Medical Center complained that their supervisor, in a conversation with them, referred to the Washington Redskins as ‘red n—–s.'”

So “red n—–s” seems to be the operative quote, not “that is as derogatory… as having a team called N—-s.”

As for the coverup issue, this sounds like a case where it’s not clear cut whether the term is used or mentioned, nor whether the use is offensive. That’s why I think it may be that Bond is not clearly wrong and that Howell is not deliberately covering up an offensive use.

(My campus may be whiter than yours, BTW, but I haven’t taught ethics here yet.)

20

drapetomaniac 12.06.03 at 12:10 pm

So, focus on racist language, especially when it is highly doubtful that it was racist, on campus, often seems to me to be highly diversionary.

Come on. So you turned this story into a parable of political correctness in which the black people complaining were ruining the life of such a well-meaning employee because you *really* *really* care about the economic issues facing minorities?

At least you’re not “stunningly ignorant of the salience of race to life-prospects in America.”

Pardon me while I apply a cold compress to my optimism of the will.

21

harry 12.06.03 at 4:55 pm

Drape (if I may),
I intended the post as a much more light-hearted comment on the use-mention distinction than it has obviously been taken as — and I can see why you’ve taken it the way you have, so I regret the way I framed it. Also Matt’s points (now I understand them) seem fair to me. I don’t mean to be giving aid-and-comfort, and will be more careful how I pose things in future. It was almost an accident that I mentioned Bond, as I could have made the point I wanted to make without doing so, and I did not intend to make the other point — ‘look how silly these identity politics people are’. Both the Cavalier and, according to its report, Howell, make the mistake I was pointing to.

So, mea culpa.

That said, can I say two things which are incidental to my post but not to the discussion which emerged:

1) If my own campus had devoted the attention and time it has devoted to hate speech codes to finding ways of supporting African American students instead, it would be a better campus for African American students to be on. Even if it were just a matter of the professors involved devoting their own time to extra office hours rather than the extra committee work (on both the pro- and anti- code sides).

2) I’m always uneasy when professors call for disciplinary action for clerical and maintenance staff. We are (almost) the most privileged on campus; they are the least privileged. This person was a ‘supervisor’; but so is a MacDonald’s manager. On my campus even supervisory roles are low paid and low status. Bond clearly didn’t call for the employee to be fired, but compulsory sensitivity training is disciplinary action (and it varies enormously in the way it is carried out, ranging from something everyone should experience to a demeaning and offensive waste of time. Bond almost certainly knows how good it is on his campus, so I think its fair to presume it is high-ish quality there — but still, it’s a form of discipline). Not to say that it is never justified to call for disciplinary action, but in this case it doesn’t look justified.

22

Matt Weiner 12.06.03 at 9:17 pm

I’d just like to say that I agree entirely with Harry’s points 1 and 2.

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