If he was suspended for calling an African-American kid “black”, the school’s being ridiculous. If he called an African-American black using the N-word, that’s a much different case, and suspension would be appropriate. If he called a white kid “black”, intending it as an insult (the way kids use “gay” as an insult), that’s several layers deep of a problem, and maybe suspension would be appropriate or maybe not.
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Some commenter on another news source got to this before I did, but “My principal turned me into a newt once.”
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I agree - there is very little information in the original article about the suspension for a racial epithet, and whether it was intended as a slur.
Wait - his “foot” has “toes”!?!? I’m so confused.
Instead of a “shoe related activity” I think he should refer to it as “socktual activity”
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Are there many African American / black kids in your child’s school? My son attends a large city high school which is almost perfectly 1/3 white, 1/3 AA, and 1/3 Asian. Black is a descriptive term that is used quite often by all races. There are African American History classes, but as of right now they have signs up for black history month. Context is always the key. It is not hard to know when someone is trying to insult you.
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Well, a number of the top hits from that Google link you provided gave the results of a recent study (that has been in the news quite a bit) that empirically demonstrated a penalty associated with “lack” as opposed to “African American.”
True that. The problem, I guess, is when a third party is trying to figure out if A is insulting B. Blanket rules certainly don’t apply.
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And then the principal held the student back one year in punishment. YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!
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And I would expect you would be livid if your child called me “gay”, instead of “homosexual American”. Behind your back, I would tell him to call me “gay” and that his daddy is an asshole.
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It’s foolish! People tend to be considered “white” regardless of where they are from. What about non-American blacks? Or people who got to the US in a roundabout way, such as from England? Any label can become pejorative, so I think people should stand their ground and own these words, instead of shifting to a more acceptable one because an older term has become “tainted” by abuse. In any case, I don’t assume to know what groups to lump people into, so I just go by what they tell me.
Now, ethnic labels puzzle me far more than racial ones. Why are Hispanic people an “ethnicity” while other regions of Europe aren’t? Is there something special about Spain? Most relevant forms and censuses make no provision for declaring yourself anything else from Europe. And the alternate, “Latino” is even more ambiguous! It supposedly refers to anyone of a Latin-speaking country, which would also include, for instance, France and Italy. But this usage appears to be uncommon. It’s awkward to claim “Latino” in one place and have that translated as “Hispanic” in another.
Labelling by language is another peculiarity. I have met quite a few people from Central America and South America who identify simply as Spanish. Even those who are obviously indigenous who in all likelihood have no European blood in them at all. If people are “Spanish” only because they speak the Spanish language, then doesn’t this make English language speaking people of the US “English”?
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Honestly not many. Maybe 1-2%. 15% Asian I am guessing. It is all context though.
We are truly doomed as a species; it’s true: The assholes have inherited the Earth! And they’re teaching in our schools and running what’s left of our government, and poisoning our planet!
No, I believe under Texas law, the principal is now Governor.
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If he has the One, it’s the domain controller for the Three, Seven, and Nine networks.
Disappearing ring? Like, taking a phone and ringing a Mafia hit man?
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And they all use Tolkein ring protocol…
In my experience, the kindergarten students are usually the victims of “nose theft.”
However, this story’s origin in Texas suggests the likely response would be
first and ask questions later.
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remembers Novell Netware, falls to the floor in convulsions
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No-well nyet-working?
One of my sub-jobs was tunneling IPX over TCP/IP, using OpenVPN…
Edit: Here it is! http://shaddack.twibright.com/projects/ipx/
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A pregnant woman?!?! Somebody think of the children!
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I remember watching an episode of Question Time years ago (British TV programme where members of the public audience ask questions of politicians/thinkers). One of the members of the panel was a white American. When he responded to a black British woman in the audience he referred to her as African American, which got a bit of an in-drawn breath from the crowd. I have a feeling she corrected him and pointed out that she was British Afro-Caribbean.
It struck me at the time that he’d obviously started using ‘African American’ in place of whatever he would previously have used to describe someone with that skin colour, but that it wasn’t necessarily a suitable replacement since it conflated skin colour and nationality.
I admit that I found “person of colour” a little strange when I first heard it, and I don’t think it’s caught on in the UK yet.
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