UPDATE (July 11, 2008) I have followed up on this issue with another post. Turns out my opinions in the post below were right in the first place, so you can mentally remove the strike-throughs.
I try to be sensitive to other peoples’ feelings, when it’s called for. However, some people also seem all-too-ready to be offended.
Take the case of two Dallas County commissioners. One of them commented that so much paperwork had been lost in an office that it had become a "black hole".
Another commissioner took great offense at this, and said it was more like a "white hole". Then a judge demanded that the first commissioner apologize for his "racially insensitive" remark.
The first commissioner is white, the second two men are black.
I have news for the two men who were offended by this remark. [Note: I may have been too hasty to include the second commissioner as being offended here; that's how I read the article, but it's not clear.]
One: the term "black hole" has been around for decades. It has nothing to do at all with human skin color. Interpreting it that way is at best bizarre.
Two: the analogy of a black hole has been used countless times in situations just like this one, and it’s not offensive.
[Note #2: this next comment of mine may be incorrect. It's again how I interpreted the article, but several commenters interpreted it a different way, and their way makes more sense to me. So I will leave the following comment but strike it through.]
Three: the real racially insensitive remark in this transaction was the comment about a "white hole". Or maybe it’s a racially oversensitive remark. After all, it’s clear there was no intent that the black hole comment was racially charged, and the term itself is totally benign. The only interpretation here is that the second commissioner is way too sensitive. Would he have been upset if the office had cleared its debts that month, and was told it was now "in the black"?
Sometimes words mean just what they are supposed to mean.
Four: the judge should have told the second guy to lighten up.
Now maybe this is a very racially-charged area of the country. It’s not too much of a stretch to imagine that to be the case. If true, it’s not surprising that there might be sensitive feelings over this issue. But that’s no excuse for what happened, and it’s certainly no excuse for the second commissioner to himself make a racial comment as he did. And it’s definitely not an excuse for the judge — a judge — to demand an apology.
The first commissioner apparently did not back down, saying that the term was a figure of speech. Good for him. White or black, I don’t care: this is a foolish situation, where innocent terms get twisted due to subjective interpretation… and in this case, a grossly incorrect one.
And five: black holes don’t care what color your skin is. They’ll gobble you down without a hiccup if you’re white, black, green, or blue. They are the ultimate equal opportunity destroyer.
We have lots of problems in this country that need to be dealt with, and racism is a big one (a very big one, likely to be much, much bigger come the election in November). But it needs to be treated seriously, and overblowing nonsense like this doesn’t help.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
When I saw the “white hole” remark, “racially insensitive” was not what came to mind. What came to mind was that the office must be spewing out so much paperwork that it overwhelmed even the amount of paperwork it lost.
If laypeople were going to use terms of physics as figures of speech, I wish they would have done so in a manner consistent with the actual physics.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Anyway, everyone knows even a black hole would spew some paperwork out from time to time. In fact, if you have a paperwork and an anti-paperwork existing right at the limit…
Or maybe we don’t think it’s offensive because we actually know what a black hole is.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Ugh…it’s stuff like this that makes me embarrassed to call Dallas home. Just so everyone knows, though, we’re not all a bunch of dumb racists down here. Also, John Wiley Price (the black commissioner that started this whole thing) is well-known around the area for playing the race card as often as possible, which, to most sane people, really eats into his credibility, but his constituency really eats it up.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Having something of a temper, I might have explained what a black hole was, then launched into an “apology” like Paul Newman gives in “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.”
Gad. When I read “White Hole,” I immediately thought of an office creating and endless stream of paperwork.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
I read it like Yoo. I figured they mean white whole as in the color of the paper not the skin. But tone may have indicated what was meant. Maybe the guy really was being racist, hopefully the guy that made the call is good at judging character, it is part of his job. Oh wait, Lefty makes a good point, and they seem to actually know the people its about.
BTW, fancy new place you’ve got here. Just don’t sell out man, stay hardcore! Hardcore Astronomy and Dr. Who….
July 9th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Dallas really isn’t a very racially-charged area of the country.
Any way, isn’t a white hole a purely theoretical concept as we haven’t seen any evidence for them?
July 9th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
See, now when I read “white hole” I imagined people were transported to another part of the universe via a wormhole in the office. And I figure that losing personnel that way is kind of a bad thing…
Do either commissioner number 2 or the judge know what an astrophysical black hole is? It makes for a better argument than “figure of speech.” And by argument, I mean smack down.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I guess for some people, rationality is something to be niggardly about.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Now that’s interesting. It didn’t occur to me at all that the second guy meant a white hole to mean it was spewing out paper. That’s a really good point.
I tentatively retract my conclusion that the second commissioner made a racial comment. In fact, he may know enough about cosmology to make use of the term “white hole” (though I’ll note that idea is long outmoded).
However, I still hold the judge in contempt of science, and common sense. Demanding an apology for a racial comment is ridiculous. And if he did for the first comment, why not the second?
July 9th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
OK, I edited the text to reflect this new understanding. As I see it now, the second commissioner may not have been offended; I may have conflated the judge’s outrage with the second commissioner. That’s unfair.
But I stick by my opinion of the judge.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
“Sometimes words mean just what they are supposed to mean.”
I dare say that where humans are involved, this is completely untrue. That’s why scientists have mathematics, and computer programmers have context-free grammars.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
The article states that “TV News cameras were rolling”… does anyone know where that footage can be found? Might help to add context to the statements and determine if Price (the 2nd commissioner) was acted as an offended black man or just making a flippant comment regarding the paper, or if it was just the judge’s over-reaction.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
First While it’s possible that “white hole” could be used to mean a paper stream, in the context of the story I think it was used racially. Somebody got bent out of shape by the use of “black hole” and retaliated. We’re not dealing with mental giants here, judging by their actions, and the “while hole” as a paper mess seems a bit too coherent.
This type of ridiculousness is at best stupid and at worst damaging to attempts by leaders to address real racial issues. It reminds of several stories of people be censured for using the word “niggardly.” Link below:
http://www.adversity.net/special/niggardly.htm
July 9th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
This story brings to mind an example of the same – let’s call it “thinking”, although it strikes me more as emoting without thinking – in the UK. In British schools, the thing nailed to wall upon which a teacher writes or draws diagrams using chalk has always been called a blackboard, owing to the fact that it is a board that is painted black. This has never had any link to ethnicity in any way. However, UK teachers are now forbidden from using the word blackboard, lest it cause racial offence, and must instead adopt the americanism “chalkboard”. The objects that have all but replaced the blackboard – smooth plastic boards upon which felt-tipped markers are used instead of chalk – are still for some reason still called whiteboards.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Nah, you were probably right the first time. Just because we science-geek-toids thought of the white holes from theoretical physics, doesn’t mean that these guys, or most people, would have seen that.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I just heard privately from someone else who agrees with my original interpretation. I think all we can say is that the second commissioner *might* have been using the term “white hole” racially — I can decide, since both sides seem to have a point here — but that the judge for sure has made a huge error.
If you have an opinion, please comment. It does seem unlikely but not impossible that a commissioner would know about white holes. Thoughts?
July 9th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
“Four: the judge should have told the second guy to lighten up.” Oh Phil, how could you be so racialy insensitive. :p “…lighten up…” indeed.
Sometimes your are funny. Ever consider writting for a sitcom?
July 9th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Based on this youtube video I found it seems that the second commissioner (”White Hole”) – John Wiley Price – is well known for his strong (to put it lightly) views on race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YsEoVuotyk
It seems very plausible that he meant “White Hole” and took the term “Black Hole” to be a racial one.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Pop: hmmm, that’s funny. I think your comment makes my original point perfectly. It’s easy to take an innocent word and twist it through your own perceptions.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
“And five: black holes don’t care what color your skin is. They’ll gobble you down without a hiccup if you’re white, black, green, or blue. They are the ultimate equal opportunity destroyer.”
Is there an exception for people who are white on the left side and black on the right? Those people are clearly superior to those who are white on the right side.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Is there such thing as dark paperwork matter and if there is, is it there such thing as anti dark paperwork matter or is it its own antimatter.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
“Sometimes your are funny. Ever consider writting for a sitcom?”
This site already is his sitcom. Complete with highly dynamic laugh-track.
Race has become such a cluttered issue that it’s pretty much not fair to anyone these days. Name a single home security commercial that features a black bandit robbing a white homeowner. It doesn’t exist. Why? Because if that were shown, every so-called “equal rights” organization in the country would be calling for boycots and commanding all kinds of senseless media coverage. No one can do or say anything without having to first think carefully about how it will be perceived by people with itchy trigger fingers waiting to fire the discrimination gun.
The fact that racism does exist makes it impossible for some to tell whether something was intentionally used to offend someone, or if it was just misunderstood. Every other day I see something on the news about how some school banned something because one kid thought it was “racist”, or about how some group is complaining that some Hispanic or Japanese comic strip or commercial portrayed black people as monkeys. But few complain when the stereotypical “black comedian” uses white people as a joke. And it goes both ways. There are people equally as over-sensitive on all sides of all races, and unfortunately I only see it getting worse. But of course this isn’t a forum on equality.
The only tie-in I can make to astronomy is thinking about how I just saw some episodes of Star Trek TNG that dealt with this kind of stuff, illustrating how hundreds of years from now we’ll look back and laugh about how concerned we were with race and whatnot. MAKE IT SO!!!!
July 9th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
When the 2nd commissioner got heated, did he emit black body radiation?
P.S. to Phil: I was thinking the exact same thing as Pop. I thought it was so funny it *had* to be intentionally mocking the stupidity of these people.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I like the comment left on the article page by one reader: “This is a story from the Onion, right?”
Also judging by the comments, the 2nd commissioner who objected to “black hole” apparently never misses an opportunity to play the race card to accuse somebody els eof racial intolerance.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I note, however, that calling it a “white hole” in that context is UNEQUIVOCALLY a racist comment and the speaker should be forced to apologize.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
As an explanation of my previous comment (hit submit due to my hand being bumped)…
What I took from the article was that the white hole comment was made in jest, however, I didn’t get teh sense that the guy who made it was meaning white paper flowing out. The sense i immediately had was that he was making the crack as a racial joke (in jest, but racial nevertheless) using the “black hole” comment as a straight-line.
The judge needs to lighten up in any case.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I’m strongly reminded of the BS of being forced to call a black board a chalk board. It’s a board and it’s black, I’m goning to call it black board! That does not make me a bad person and it does not make me racist. I really hate hyper-PC bovine excrement like this.
Bart.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Phil,
your sentence:
“Sometimes words mean just what they are supposed to mean.”
stroke me hard. Language is always interpreted by the reciever. Like art. Whatever the artist tried to imply, the audience is free to interpret. I suppose differently than you suppose. So language is sadly not a clearly defining means of communication. Words never mean what they are supposed to. They are always dependant on the circumstances they are spoken in.
then again, subtlety usually gets lost in the background noise . . .
July 9th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
First, these people need to grow up. This is unbelievably silly and childish; not to mention ignorant. The mind boggles. At first, I didn’t even understand what Phil was getting at. I thought “White Hole” was a mildly funny, lame-ish joke on the part of the other person. It never even occurred to me that it was meant to be something racial. That doesn’t even make sense.
I guess the first person should have called it “African American Hole.”
~j
July 9th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
As a American, my chalkboards were always green. Didn’t make much sense to call a green board black.
@infidel, no. Actually, the reason we have CFGs in computer science is because it’s fairly easy to teach a computer to understand them. Introduce a little context, and the silly things get all confused.
I’m going to agree with Phil. The judge is a moron. Ignorance, as always, is the enemy.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
@ Philip
“Language is always interpreted by the reciever. Like art.”
I strongly disagree with this! That is certainly true of art… but language? At times it can be open to interpretation, but at times, it’s really not. Like if I point to a ball and say “this is a ball”… how exactly can that be open to interpretation?
July 9th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Like if I point to a ball and say “this is a ball”… how exactly can that be open to interpretation?
Depends on which (or whose) ball you are pointing at.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Well, it’s nice to see stupidity completely unrelated to religiosity for once. I wonder how long it will take for the Western world to figure out that various biases such as racism and sexism and the like are just natural consequences of the human brain’s ingrained tendency to categorize things and thus representative of the “us and them” thought structures which are the result of every individual’s upbringing. If we can honestly admit that this is natural, that everyone has their biases, and that as rational people we can grow past it, we can deal with this much more healthily than just saying it’s wrong and evil and even a smidgen is a mortal sin.
The Victorians tried to repress human sexuality. Fat lot of good that did them.
If I were the first commissioner, I know what I’d do…
“Ladies and gentlemen. I have been ordered to apologize over the use of the term ‘black hole’ to describe an office where paperwork tends to get lost and disappear. To those of you who don’t know, a black hole is an astronomical body so dense and strong that not even light escapes it, and it has a tendency of sucking things up and making them disappear–hence ‘black hole.’ With this in mind, my statement was completely apropos to the situation and had not the least iota of racial connotation to it.’
“Since I’ve already been accused and judged, however, and I’m certain that the second commissioner’s ‘white hole’ comment will not be addressed in the same fashion, I may as well earn my censure. That office runs about as well as the average African country.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I truly apologize for the completely insensitive comparison of that office to African countries. I did not mean to suggest that those of African descent are incapable of good governance and I am deeply sorry.”
July 9th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
And didn’t someone on The View recently admit they didn’t know
that Earth was round?
Our educational system is failing all around. Everyone will soon
be left behind.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Actually, it depends on the intent of the first guy maybe he said it in a way that was offensive or he has a history of this sort of thing. Also, if the other 2 guys misinterpreted the meaning then why do assume the first guy was using the term correctly. You automatically sided to defend the white guy.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
>>You automatically sided to defend the white guy.
Perhaps because the term “black hole” really doesn’t make any sense in a racial context. If you didn’t know the astronomical meaning of the term, exactly what interpretation could you possibly put on it that would make sense? Hence, interpreting the expression racially really is weird.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
The economy tanking, a pointless war with no end in sight, global warming debate…and this is what these guys choose to argue about!?!?!?
Why am I not one bit surprised?
July 9th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I was wondering when I would be accused of defending “the white guy”. I even said as much to Mrs. BA.
Sigh. I was defending the use of the term “clack hole”. It happened to be said by a white guy. Had the judge been white and still asked for an apology, it wouldn’t have mattered. The judge is still wrong.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Yes, people are racially oversensitive. It’s time to move on, dangnabit. There’s no races.
July 9th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Except sack races. Those are fun.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Ignorance of etymology + excess of spare time = “political correctness”
As it is in the USA, so it is in the UK, and probably many other places for all I know.
There are children in my country singing “Baa baa rainbow sheep” too, apparently.
All the black people I know and have asked about it hate this kind of thing. They say that it does far more harm than good.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Sadly, this reminds me of the time the contestant Omarosa took racial offense on the first season of “The Apprentice” when another contestant made a comment about “the pot calling the kettle black.”
The sad part about this is that I know that. And now you do, too.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Further words and phrases to be stricken from the language: orientation, cracker, black eye, white bread, Spic ‘n’ Span(TM), white-out, blackout, red tape, yellow-bellied, tighty-whities, double chin, linchpin, black sheep, off-white, Hispanic (it’s sexist: what about Herspanics?).
I’m sure there are more, but my mind in probably too rational to think of them.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
“Yes, people are racially oversensitive. It’s time to move on, dangnabit. There’s no races.”
Yes, I agree, race is a biologically meaningless term as far as humans are concerned. But try telling that to the government. The next time y’all fill out your census forms from the government I suggest you do what I do. On the list of all the races check every single box … Caucacian, African American, Native American, Pacific Islander, …, One-eyed gay Eskimos, etc., etc. You share genes with all of these groups of people. If everyone did that it would be interesting to see what kind of jerrymandered (there, an anti-German racist slur for y’all) Congressional districts the morons would come up with.
BTW, would the term “knappy headed black hole” be appropriate or would it get you fired from your job?
July 9th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
I agree with an earlier comment posted. Whether or not the “black hole” comment was racially charged (I guess, with some bending, you could argue that the person who said it was being clever and meaning a literal black hole as well as a hole of black folk or whatever, we really can’t tell without knowing exactly what he said, how he said it, and his expression while saying it), the response of “white hole” was *definitely* racially charged, and yet no one in the case has picked up on that. Kind of annoying.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
I think that we as science-folks will automatically think of one thing when we hear the term “black hole”. But it has had different historical meanings, after all, I don’t think that the “Black Hole of Calcutta” had anything to do with setting the escape velocity to c.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I saw this link posted on Reddit and a couple other sites, no one other than the posters here seem to be under the impression that ‘white hole’ was anything other than bigotry.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Don’t we have freedom of speech in this country. If someone wants to make a racist remark that’s their right it doesn’t matter if you offend people or not. Anything you say people can be offended by it. If I hear something I don’t like I ignore it, simple. It seems like we Americans have become nothing more than a bunch of “whining cry babies.” Oh you offended me, boo who who. People can’t seem to handle any type of remark that goes their way. Grow up and don’t worry about what other people say.
You have a right to be racist if you want but I wouldn’t recommend it. No I’m not a racist. I don’t believe color of skin should be relevant to anything but I will still defend the rights of people I don’t like. Using the term “black hole” definately has nothing to do with race. It’s just a figure of speech get over it.
July 9th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
There are so MANNNNYYY words we’re not supposed to use in polite society I have decided to stick with IMPOLIT society rather than surrender the use of language altogether.
George Carlin would LOVE this BS,,,
For those who see challenge in the nefarious N word consider referring to black americans as “people of recent African ancestory” as opposed to those of us who have rather ancient African ancestory and are often referred to by the afore mentioned as “whity,,,”
GAry 7
July 9th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
@Tom Marking –
It’s gerrymander, not jerrymander and is a combination of the word salamander and the name Elbridge Gerry who, IIRC, was governor af Massachusetts around 1812. The word came about due a reporter who noted that a redistriciting for political advantage done on behalf of Gerry just happened to create an area in the shape of a salamander. Thus the word Gerrymnader was born. So, no anti-German slurs there… but possibly an anti salamander one!
More than you ever wanted to know… but you get to anyways!
Now, more on topic…. Morons should not be allowed to hold office. But then we’d have no government at all would we?
July 9th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
Yes, it is important to weed out potential racism, wherever it occurs, and however seemingly innocent! For example:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/education/2261307/Toddlers-who-dislike-spicy-food-racist,-say-report.html
July 9th, 2008 at 6:39 pm
Ad:
That has to be a joke.
Please tell me that The Telegraph is a parody, like The Onion.
Please?
July 9th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
# Stark Says:
…. Morons should not be allowed to hold office. But then we’d have no government at all would we?
Is there a negative anywhere in this?
J/P=?
July 9th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Speaking of pc and black holes remember this blast from the past:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/06/22/black-holes-even-the-name-sucks/
July 9th, 2008 at 6:54 pm
A couple of technical questions:
Would it be at all reasonable to say that our entire universe is a white hole? (ie the big bang was a white hole?)
If you are a colored individual falling into a black hole, would not your color change as the light reflecting off your body is stretched to longer wavelengths by the gravitational field? Would this not mean that everyone falling into a black hole would be “red”. Would there ever be a point where you would cease to have any color at all, because the light reflecting off your body is bent so strongly towards the center of mass of the black whole that nothing else would be able to perceive it?
July 9th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
As someone who works in the same building that the commissioners meet, and is fairly familiar with stories (and actions) of Commissioner John Wiley Price, I would place my money on him using the “black hole” comment to make a show of being offended and replying in an intentionally offensive manner. He’s not exactly a classy fellow.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
“Baa baa rainbow sheep”
Isn’t that prejudiced against homosexuals ?
(ducking)
July 9th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I think we definitely need to see the video before we can pass judgment. It sounds ridiculous in print, but we don’t know how it was said. I spent part of my childhood growing up in silly-racist-ville, and was frequently the target of racism. Some was overt, but sometimes it was more subtle. In these cases, nothing inherently racist was done or said, but the intent was clear. And if you think I lack perspective, I’d like to add that I never experienced this before I moved there, and it stopped when I moved away.
I’m also reminded of that ridiculous case where a woman was awarded a millions of dollars after she spilled coffee on herself. It sure sounds insane, but when I actually looked up the circumstances of the case, I found myself squarely on the side of the woman. And so were 12 jurors.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
That judge sounds so dense I bet light bends around him.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
It also bothers me when people cry reverse racism because you can’t show a black person committing a crime on TV. Who cares? Is that such a great burden for people to carry? If it is, then I agree. We should change that. If not, why bring it up? We can all agree that there are good reasons things are the way they are. And for the record, even though it happens less these days, I still see plenty of blacks and latinos committing crimes against white people in television and movies.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Yeah this colour word racism crap has really gotten out of hand. My sister teaches over in Scotland and she tells me teachers aren’t allowed to use words like ‘black board’ and ‘brainstorming’ because they’re considered racist and insensitive. Also they’re not allowed to sing ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’ because it’s offensive to black people.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
If white hole was intended to mean a place that spews out paperwork, then why did the judge ask for an apology? I don’t buy it. White hole was a racial remark coming from a person who plays teh race card all the time and whom is an avid reverse-racist. I live in North Richland Hills which is in the DFW area and I know who this guy is. He could not have meant anything else by white hole as racial in context nor could he as a result of his past statements.
Here is an article on Mr. Price that can give an idea of Mr. Price’s former behavior.
http://ctucker.wordpress.com/category/john-wiley-price/
July 9th, 2008 at 10:31 pm
In “The Universe in a Nutshell”, Hawking points out that the term “black hole” was eschewed by the French due to its anatomical conotation. It is said that the giggling was heard all the way across the channel when it was proposed that, due to the ultimate uniformity of any gravitationally collapsing body, “a black hole has no hair”.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
I can’t stand this extreme political correctness. What’s next, people saying you can’t use the expression “there’s a nip in the air” just in case a Japanese person floating past in a hot air balloon is within earshot? How about refraining from saying “there’s a chink in his armour” out of respect for Chinese knights? Good grief.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Hoonser, why do the Scots have a problem with “brainstorming”?
July 9th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Niggardly is another word that can cause paroxysms.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
This why we need George Carlin now more than ever! He saw through all this PC BS. He loved words ALL words and hated the sanitisation of language that in HIS words “sucked the life out of life”. He will be greatly missed.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Some of you sound just like Christians who get mad if they hear someone say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Once again, can somebody please explain to me how their lives are negatively impacted by not being able to use a phrase that might be offencive to someone. Just because it sounds silly, doesn’t mean it is.
Ba Ba Black Sheep is the perfect example. When I first moved to silly-racist-ville (with it’s 20 to 1 white to black ratio), there was a little black girl in my school who everyone called ba ba, which she hated. They referred to her hair as wool, and made jokes about holding her down and shearing her. I think in that situation, banning Ba Ba Black Sheep would be the least we could do. Racism can take some really unexpected forms.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
I can’t remember where, but somewhere in the internet I saw that the namer of “black hole” was a very naughty astronomer and he intentionally chose this term for its sexual connotation.
…and then, if it was not enough, he also coined the phrase “a black hole has no hair.”
Oops, so now whoever utters “black hole” is automatically accused of sexual harassment, I guess. Crap.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
OK, so, traditionally (pre-20th C) a black hole was a military lock-up. Not a pleasant place. But not something you’d normally associate with a desk where paperwork goes missing.
You could describe where someone lived as “a hole”, if it was messy/filthy/etc. (I know from personal experience!) If you interpreted the black hole comment along those lines it would be pretty offensive. Bit of a stretch though. About as believable as the “white hole” comment being a jocular reference to the colour of the paper.
It all comes down to tone, body language, etc. You had to be there to judge.
“Like if I point to a ball and say “this is a ball”… how exactly can that be open to interpretation?”
Celtic_Evolution, you chose a simple example but you still had to describe the context (”if I point to a ball”). And even then, are you naming the object or commenting on how much fun it is? If you were at a baseball game you could be talking about a poor pitch.
The English language is a tricky thing!
I play World of Warcraft (and I have a life – it’s the housework that suffers; see “hole” above) and I once tried to use the word Nigeria in chat. The first 5 letters got bleeped by the system…
July 10th, 2008 at 12:51 am
I am having posts deleted. Wassup with that? I’m not using naughty words.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:32 am
Just to clear up some of the UK stuff.
First, use of the term blackboard is not banned in UK schools, unless someone has something more substantial to supply than an “I’ve heard”.
Second, the Baa Baa Blacksheep thing was in two nursery schools in the same area where they regularly substituted words in an attempt to expand the vocabulary of the kids.
See: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4782856.stm
Third, the report on “yuk” to spicy food is nonsense, and fairly typical of the Telegraph these days…rapidly becoming a broadsheet Daily Mail. From the site of the NCB, who published the guidance book, the “yuk” was an example of something that was NOT to be identified as racist.
See: http://www.ncb.org.uk/Page.asp?originx_6073ic_23555200356948j64k_2008772856u
Can I recommend that some people not take every case of this stuff at face value?
As someone else has said, it’s like the whole “they’re banning Christmas” rubbish…every case of which (in the UK anyway) has been shown to be nonsense, but they still keep being trotted out.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:42 am
I worked at Boeing in what was called “The Black Hole”
Once you were transfered there, you never got out.
IUS stuff in the 80s.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:53 am
“However, some people also seem all-too-ready to be offended”
This is may be true. But I think the connotation here is that people go out looking for racism, which I think is false. Here’s an example of why.
If I make a purchase with a credit card there’s a pretty good chance that my signature will be scrutinized, and sometimes I’m required to show my ID. I never see white people being forced to do this, and it’s never happened when I’ve been shopping with a white person. Apparently that indicates that I’m one of the good ones. Does this situation get my blood boiling? Oh yeah. But I can’t complain. If I do, I’ll be accused of playing the race card. I mean they’re only following store policy.
My point is that the lives of some minorities are a constant stream of little incidents like this that make them all-too-ready to be offended. So take this into account next time before you accuse people of playing the race card, or complain about how awful political correctness is. Does anyone really think life would be so much better if we were allowed to call people things like “retard” and ”jap” again? I don’t.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:52 am
Once upon a time I was almost removed from a school due to the arrival of three new students who just happened to have dark skin. The people in that town did not believe in or practice ‘integration’. The people I was raised by taught me that having dark skin made you sub human and without a soul(highly religious family). My great grand father on my grandmothers side was a Grandmaster of a KKK.
For some reason none of this ever made a bit of sense to me. Then again, neither did religion. I understand the roots of racism now… but I don’t understand why people continue to practice it. I don’t understand why suddenly one day dark skinned people are allowed to use words that should I utter would involve negative consequences. I don’t understand a lot of things concerning racial matters, but I have some good ideas on why they still flourish and stereo types are the least of them.
I was raised by people who were proud to be raised by people who raised burning crosses in peoples yards and murdered others just for not being pale. Not once did I question the teachings presented to me… but neither did I ever believe them. So how can an innocent child, as I was, be brought up under such ideals yet decide right and wrong for herself.. but no one else can?
The only thing that will break this social retardation is the parents of our next generations. The only thing that will prevent us from losing our languages is education. We shouldn’t have to rewrite (tens of??) thousands of years of oral communications development because of a few racist and ignorant people.
As for the judge… I would’ve brought him an encyclopedia. To the ‘white hole’ commenter, a bag of cotton seeds.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:56 am
fwow, my comment got eaten even before it ever appeared, could you tell me how your filter knows it was just an useless rant ? I mean, computers aren’t yet capable of actually understand the meaning of a post, aren’t they
July 10th, 2008 at 6:06 am
sorry, but I simply have to test your automatic censor.
Kill racist butcher, all negative words, aren’t they ?
throw, lock away, victim, call to violence, totalitarian dystopia, nazi germany, and quite a few suspiciously looking phrases,
Does your AI actually understand what they mean, or does it just verbally abuse other banned posts by finding similar phrases and words and deleting anything too similar to them ?
July 10th, 2008 at 6:26 am
test by short comments
:
I think it is very simple.
That is, what hatred does to your society.
If some people hate each other, anything and everything turns into a battlefield. Schools, streets, language, if the hatred is deep enough, even maths or logic.
One side is prohibited from abusing their victims physically ? they will abuse them verbally.
Verbal abuse is prohibited ? They will just fly below the radar, deeper, deeper, and deeper, till even perfectly innocent utterances will be full of evil associations.
So that if you try to push them in the corner further, you will also push virtually everyone there.
lets see whether it is the content that makes it angry or the lenght
July 10th, 2008 at 6:29 am
test by short commejnts
:
And if you don’t, they will immediately turn and start to undo anything, till verbal abuse will be as legitimate as it was, then physical abuse and genocide is just around the corner, because they think they have as much right to kill them, as they have to abuse them verbally. For them is being prevented from butchering objects of their hatred as much unjust as is prohibition of racial slurs.
You may try to make up arbitrary borders like
“you may say anything but direct call to violence is taboo”, No problem, they will not say it directly, they will imply it indirectly ( but so plainly obviously that only a moron would deny it ), You will extend the definition no problem, they will make it just a little more indirect and more direct words will be replaced with implications , e t c, e t c, till they will be so vague that you would have to ban all speech as implying murder .
lets see what really makes it go crazy
July 10th, 2008 at 6:33 am
test continues
:
There is a subtle trick that never fails them, They can just start to use a perfeclty innocent phrase like it meant “kill them all”, and if enough people were using it in that manner, it would really start to mean that, so they can literally make every word and every phrase to mean murder.
Have absolutely no clue what to do against that.
Maybe there is no solution but to prohibit the hatred itself.
Maybe there is no other solution than to treat any racist like he were leprous and lock him somewhere and throw away the key. It may sound cruel, and uncivilised, but maybe there is no other choice, we would not survive another racist totaliarian dystopia like nazi germany
Sorry for both the rant, and trying to fool your automatic censor, if this post comes through, it will mean it is just text lenght that causes it to think the post should be censored
July 10th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Black holes may be the second most densest things in the universe…
July 10th, 2008 at 8:30 am
whoaaa! (i though) we’re finally gonna get evidence of a white hole! this will be fun…
jokes in my bad english aside, it is preocupant (and i’ve disscussed with friends and blogfolks more than once) the tendency in (north)América to trade freedom of speech for freedom to feel offended about what other people says.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:32 am
simon: sorry, but I simply have to test your automatic censor.
Mine had a post to an old CNN article about a similar case of silliness. Maybe Discovery Mag is one of those sites that can’t stand the thought of people linking away.
Jose: But I think the connotation here is that people go out looking for racism, which I think is false.
Nonsense. There’s peoiple who have built careers on just that.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:57 am
@ Colin
Celtic_Evolution, you chose a simple example but you still had to describe the context (”if I point to a ball”). And even then, are you naming the object or commenting on how much fun it is? If you were at a baseball game you could be talking about a poor pitch.
Well, you are missing something here… I only had to describe the context because you aren’t standing next to me. If you were (assuming you are not visually impaired), I would have just picked up the ball, pointed at it and said “this is a ball”… I wouldn’t have needed to describe the context, now would i? Sheesh.
And secondly, if I were at a baseball game, and I picked up a ball, pointed at it and said “this is a ball”, and you took it to mean a poor pitch, that’s not a misinterpretation… it’s you being a dolt, frankly.
I stand by what I said.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:03 am
there are people who built their careers on racism
there are people who built theirs on fighting racism
there are people who built theirs on covering racism
there are people who built their careers on uncovering it
there are people who built theirs on uncovering it even when there is no racism at all
there are people who built theirs on debunking people who built their careers on uncovering racism where is none
there are people who built their careers on protecting racism by falsely accusing people who built their careers on uncovering racism that they are the people who built their careers on finding racism here is none
it is people who build carefrs all the way down
July 10th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Nonsense. There’s peoiple who have built careers on just that.
Are you thinking of someone like Louis Farrakhan? He may be a racist idiot himself, but I can assure you he doesn’t need to go looking for racism.
My whole point is that some people are more likely to see racism where it isn’t, but nobody walks out the door looking to be a victim of racism.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:27 am
How did this nonsense even get in front of a judge? Wiley must’ve complained to the judge about the “racist” remark, so we can assume he was offended by the black hole comment (and therefore retaliated with the “white hole” comment). But the judge forcing a grown man who used a socially accepted word in the proper context to apologize for using it is just whack!
July 10th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Phil, you may have come to Discovery for very good reasons, but their automatic censor is diluting the contents of the replies.
You may want to check into that.
- Mikel
July 10th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Le langage est source de malentendus.
“Language is the source of misunderstandings.”
From “Le Petit Prince”, by Antoine de St-Exupery. He was right, too. Words can be much more ambiguous than we realize, and the real payload of most utterances is in the subtext. This is why it is so challenging to make a computer understand spoken language.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Has anyone had the opportunity to hear what Jesse Jackson said about Barack Obama? He thought he was off-mike when he said, “Obama is talking down to black people. I’d like to cut his n__ts off.”
The interesting thing is that the most disturbing part of the statement is not the portion dealing with anatomy, it’s the first sentence.
Anyway, Obama accepted Jesse’s hurried apology. I wonder if he would have accepted the apology if a white pundit had said that?
The situation with Jesse and Barack differs only in degree from the situation being discussed in this thread.
Personally, I think the whole thing is nuts.
- Mikel
July 10th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Mikel, there is no auto-censor. There is a spam filter (which is pretty weak and will be beefed up soon) and me, manually deleting spam. If I deleted something by you accidentally, I apologize. I am getting several hundred spams a day and it’s easy to miss a real comment in the filter list.
July 10th, 2008 at 10:24 am
@JediBear: Duh, that was precisely the point. The only way to be exactly, precisely explicit, i.e. for words to just mean “what they mean”, is to constrain the conversation to something objective. That isn’t possible where humans communicate with each other.
” Introduce a little context, and the silly [humans] get all confused.”
July 10th, 2008 at 10:56 am
My favorite version of this story so far is at Wonkette, with the headline “Astronomy is Racist”
http://wonkette.com/401004/astronomy-is-racist
July 10th, 2008 at 11:17 am
A long time ago I had a professor who said that he believed that we were atthe end of the enlightenment,
and I remember thinking at the time this guys fullof it.
I no longer believe that.
July 10th, 2008 at 11:56 am
You definitely have to see the video. The judge’s comments are even more ignorant than I thought they would be. Here’s a taste:
“Could I get an apology from the commissioner, in this day and time, you don’t sit around a table where you have diversity and refer to a black hole.”
July 10th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Orb, thanks for the link. In the video, you can’t really hear the “white hole” response, but it is clear that the black guy whose face we can see is annoyed. It is not a big leap to surmise that he did not know what a black hole is, and that he may think it’s a racial slur. The judge (who is sitting with his back to the camera) clearly also does not know what a black hole is, which is a bit more worrying since he’s supposed to have been to college.
The idealist in me says this is a great opportunity to educate people about black holes, but the cynic says it will instead be ripped out of context to be used for political purposes. Probably a bit of both will happen.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:46 pm
You know what? I am sick of racism. I am sick of it’s smallness. I am really sick however, of oversensitive people regarding the subject too, people that will force a racist argument out of a neutral comment, that had no intention of being racist. People that are oversensitive to stuff that is not really racism are stupid and need to grow up. These people are self pitying attention seekers.
Racism sucks, but forcing racism that is not there, sucks more.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
[...] BA blogged about this: Sometimes a black hole is just a black hole. __________________ "All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis "A witty saying [...]
July 10th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Based on what evidence is available, I’m very much inclined to agree with Phil’s initial interpretation.
There is nothing in the article to suggest Price may have been joking. Jones certainly didn’t seem to think so, nor did Mayfield, who felt compelled to explain that “black hole” was both a scientific and a contextually appropriate colloquial term, which is true on both counts. The reporter also noted that the situation needed other county officials to “break it up”.
I will grant, however, some slight benefit of doubt. Urban Dictionary suggests there may be a recognized and particularly ugly interpretation for the term “black hole”, having to do with the unique anatomy of a female with considerable notoriety. This interpretation would best be described, however, as exceptionally sexist. To call it racist appears to be a considerable stretch. It’s clear, however, that this interpretation draws heavily upon the definition of the scientific term.
Sorry for speaking so carefully, but it seems there’s no such thing as being too careful where invented racism is concerned. I’ve no doubt someone will prove me right.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Jose:
“Ba Ba Black Sheep is the perfect example. When I first moved to silly-racist-ville (with it’s 20 to 1 white to black ratio), there was a little black girl in my school who everyone called ba ba, which she hated. They referred to her hair as wool, and made jokes about holding her down and shearing her. I think in that situation, banning Ba Ba Black Sheep would be the least we could do. Racism can take some really unexpected forms.”
It’s shocking, how hurtful people can be, especially as children of a certain age. However, I have to disagree that the solution is to ban the song.
There is no difference between the use of “black sheep” in that rhyme and the use of “black” in “blackboard”. They are both there for sound, non-racist reasons: one is alliterative, the other descriptive. If people chose to pick up the song and misuse it, they are the ones to blame. If I might just paraphrase the gun lobby for a moment, here… Nursery rhymes don’t hurt people. People hurt people.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Phil, you were right in the first place. The “white hole” comment was race-baiting by a known “race card” thrower. And the judge was an idiot.
infidel said:
>>“Sometimes words mean just what they are supposed to mean.”
> I dare say that where humans are involved, this is completely untrue. That’s why scientists have mathematics, and computer programmers have context-free grammars.
JediBear said:
> @infidel, no. Actually, the reason we have CFGs in computer science is because it’s fairly easy to teach a computer to understand them. Introduce a little context, and the silly things get all confused.
JediBear, I think you misunderstood infidel. Computers need CFGs in order to understand the programming, but normal human language is context-laden. Ergo, computer programmers developed CFG’s, and even languages like Basic that look like English are specialized.
xav0971 said:
> Don’t we have freedom of speech in this country. If someone wants to make a racist remark that’s their right it doesn’t matter if you offend people or not. Anything you say people can be offended by it. If I hear something I don’t like I ignore it, simple.
No, it’s not that simple. Freedom of speech means the freedom to react to what other people say, including reacting to racist remarks by pointing them out, condemning them, and otherwise demonstrating disapproval for the ideas behind them. When remarks really are racist, then it serves a valid purpose to draw attention to the remarks and the remarker. Sometimes there are phrases in common parlance that do have racist origins and overtones, and it can be useful to point those out when the occur. But many times people react like in this case, a totally benign comment with a non-racial origin and meaning is highlighted by racial oversensitivity.
Also, the situation of the remarks makes a difference. Some wino on the street ranting may be fine to ignore, but a County Commissioner speaking at a County Commission meeting is speaking for the people, and should be held to higher standards. And if one is displaying racism, that should be identified and condemned.
Jose said:
> Some of you sound just like Christians who get mad if they hear someone say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. Once again, can somebody please explain to me how their lives are negatively impacted by not being able to use a phrase that might be offencive to someone. Just because it sounds silly, doesn’t mean it is.
It is one thing if the remark really is an offensive remark, or is meant to be offensive (used in an offensive manner). It is quite another for a completely innocent remark to be taken and offensive, and an apology demanded. If I didn’t mean to offend you, why should I apologize for you being offended by my innocuous remark? Your oversensitivity is my fault? And how am I to keep from offending you if you take anything I say as an offense? “I like bananas.” “STOP BEING OFFENSIVE!”
> Ba Ba Black Sheep is the perfect example. When I first moved to silly-racist-ville (with it’s 20 to 1 white to black ratio), there was a little black girl in my school who everyone called ba ba, which she hated. They referred to her hair as wool, and made jokes about holding her down and shearing her. I think in that situation, banning Ba Ba Black Sheep would be the least we could do. Racism can take some really unexpected forms.
That is a specific case from a specific geographic region where bigots are using any opportunity to demonstrate their bigotry. While I deplore it, it hardly makes “Baa, baa, black sheep” an inherently racist rhyme. But I could support banning of the rhyme in that context in that locale, if part of a comprehensive approach to addressing the racism of the community. Unfortunately, I doubt banning one rhyme would in itself have much effect.
Jose said:
> My whole point is that some people are more likely to see racism where it isn’t, but nobody walks out the door looking to be a victim of racism.
First off, I haven’t seen anyone claim that. Second, I will state that some people seem to be looking to be the victim of racism by their overreaction. You accept that some people see racism where it isn’t. If those people display a consistent pattern of seeing racism where it isn’t, I state that they get some satisfaction and worth out of identifying all the racists around them, and how victimized they are.
This John Wiley Price is a perfect example. He has a reputation of making everything about race. His career is built on it. Behavior like that is not helpful to the cause of race relations or the status of African Americans and other minorities. It does not reduce bigotry, it does not solve community problems. What it does is inflame people and increase racial tension.
saturn8isgreat said:
> How did this nonsense even get in front of a judge?
That was my first question, but the article clarified for me that the judge was not ruling from a bench about the remarks, he was a participant in the council meeting. His being a judge was just to identify his position and why he was present, not to indicate he was presiding.
July 10th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
This is such nonsense!! I can’t believe that a man who went to college, passed the lsat, went to law school, passed the bar exam and became a judge is not aware of the term “Black Hole” or its meaning.
Either the Judge is lying and should be punished for pushing the racially motivated “White Hole” response or be put under an academic microscope to see if he is really qualified to the hold a judgeship.
Black is not a bad word and every word with black in it is not racially motivated, but stupid is a bad word and should be used on the Judge who thinks that black holes are synonymous with black people.
Ron Paul was right when he said that education should not be controlled by the federal government.
July 10th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
When Kevin McHale played for the Celtics he was known as the black hole because when the ball was passed to him it never came back out and he was about as white as you can get.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
@ Celtic_Evolution:
It’s a bit of a stretch but I reckon I can justify the baseball example. To start with, you didn’t say you picked up a ball, just that you pointed to one. Let’s say you were teaching me the rules of baseball by showing me taped game that you’d seen earlier, so you knew what was going to happen next… Hey, I said it was a stretch!
OK, so if I was there and in the context I would understand what you meant. Because I’m not there you have to describe the context, which demonstrates how crucial the context is.
…and now I realise that I am totally missing the point of your disagreement with Philip’s comment. You never said context wasn’t important. In fact, in your earlier post you mentioned the value of seeing the footage to establish context.
See how easily these misinterpretations happen? Easier with written forms (e-mails & blogs) than face-to-face. I reckon that effective communication involves judging how your message is coming across and making adjustments on the fly. It’s so easy to get into a “But I only said… Yeah but you meant…” type of argument.
Not sure if I disagree with you or not anymore. But I do think that “Language is always interpreted by the receiver” is a fair statement.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
[...] yesterday’s foofooraw over the term black hole? I wasn’t sure if the second commissioner in this event was being racist or [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 12:13 am
Jose:
I have two little comments.
1) My mom is white. She gets asked for her ID virtually *every time* she makes a purchase. I once saw her not get asked for it, and she was so startled that for a moment she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. Me on the other hand? With the obvious exception of airports, not once, not once in my entire life have I been asked for my ID. Not for CC purchases, not for liquor stores, not for bars or clubs. Nothing. Never. Naughtta. Apparently I normally have a trustworthy expression on my face. Maybe you and my mom don’t walk around with a slight friendly looking smile all the time?
2) I’m white. My parents live in the US and I live in Canada, so I have to fly to see them. I have never, not once in the 7 years I have been flying to the US to see them, failed to have both myself and my bags thoroughly searched. I get picked out of every line, seemingly at random, for no apparent reason. Why is this? I think I know the answer:
The first few times it happened, on my first few flights, it was no big deal. It probably *was* completely random at that time. But after those first few times, I started to feel kind of hunted if you know what I mean;). So every time I stood in one of those airport security lines, I’d unconsciously try to look innocent and unassuming. Yeah. Those people (security guards) spend their entire careers looking for people doing suspicious things. Now I look suspicious every time I step into one of those lines. Of COURSE they’re going to draw me out of line. None of their security tech is worth a damn, so all they have to go by is how nervous people look. And they do a pretty decent job of catching the nervous people too:P.
But if I was anything other than white, I’d probably have jumped to the conclusion that they were racial profiling me. The circumstantial evidence would *appear* to be conclusive. It wouldn’t be true of course, but I’d still think it, and I’d probably go around spouting that mistruth to everyone I knew.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:27 am
@Irishman said
It is one thing if the remark really is an offensive remark, or is meant to be offensive (used in an offensive manner). It is quite another for a completely innocent remark to be taken and offensive, and an apology demanded. If I didn’t mean to offend you, why should I apologize for you being offended by my innocuous remark? Your oversensitivity is my fault? And how am I to keep from offending you if you take anything I say as an offense? “I like bananas.” “STOP BEING OFFENSIVE!”
I’m not saying anyone should apologize. All I’m asking is that people be less quick to cry “He’s playing the race card” or “reverse racism”. I don’t know if anybody has explicitly said that in a post here, but it’s certainly implied in many of them.
I don’t know the players involved in this case, but I can think of many scenarios where this could have been racism. When Phil wrote this, he clearly didn’t have enough information to know either way, yet he’s immediately accusing people of “all-too-ready to be offended”. It may be that he’s absolutely spot on in this case, and from the posts of people familiar with these folks, maybe he was. But that’s not the point. The point is that there’s was a definite chance that this post was a knee jerk reaction to some misleading headlines and blurbs.
I know that there is nothing inherently racist about Ba Ba Black Sheep and never suggested such. All I said is that it’s possible to twist something non racist into something that is. Imagine if a school banned it’s singing for the very reasons I’d detailed in my previous post. When the news media and blogosphere got a hold of the story, I guarantee that the headlines would be things like “Political Correctness Gone to Far”, “Black People Will Make Anything a Race Issue” or “White’s Facing Discrimination at one Elementary School”. Very few would dig deep enough to get the correct headline “Little Girl Tortured by Racist Classmates Because of Her Ancestry”.
This is exactly what happened in the case where the woman was awarded a millions of dollars after she spilled coffee on herself. Only then it was headlines decrying frivolous lawsuits. For weeks she was talk show host fodder. Dig a little deeper, and it’s not so clear cut. Here’s a quick summary of the case. McDonald’s had received hundreds of reports of severe burns caused by the fact that they kept their coffee way to hot, and the lids of there coffee had a tendency to pop off. It was a long standing problem with a simple solution (turn down the heat, or get more secure lids), which they chose to ignore. In 1994, The woman in question simply went through a drive through, got her coffee, and while she was securing it, the lid popped off. She was horribly burned on her legs (If you can find the photos, they are quite gruesome). All she asked for was that McDonald’s pay for her medical bills. They refused, so she sued. 12 perfectly sane jurors saw how irresponsible McDonald’s had been, and decided to send a message by awarding the woman $2.9 million dollars (which was later reduced to $480,000 thousand dollars). The facts of the case are out there, yet even today people will cite it as proof of what’s wrong with our legal system.
And if there’s anyone still reading this thread, please answer this part of my comment. How are your lives negatively impacted by refraining from using a phrase or symbol that might be offencive to someone? Why the outrage? Why is political correctness always a negative?
Growing up, I would used the term “jipped” to mean ripped off. When I learned that it was a gypsy slur, I was pretty surprised. Now, I don’t ever think I’ve ever even met a gypsy, but I immediately stopped using the term. And you know what, my life is exactly the same. There’s no sense of loss. No gaping hole that the rest of my vocabulary was unable to fill. The “burden” of being politically correct is minuscule compared to the amount of energy people spend railing against it.
But even if this story was absolutely true, I’d have a problem with news storys and posts like this that boil down to “Silly minorites get upset over nothing”. It falls into the same class as the “I didn’t get the job because I’m a white guy” story. They’re isolated incidents with issues that 99% of white American will never encounter. But these stories aren’t harmless. They foster an unjust feeling of resentment and hostility and towards minorities. Many times throughout my career people have stated or implied that I have a leg up on the competition when it comes to getting a job, when in fact my name makes it dificult for me to even get an interview. Of course, my interview problems went away one day when I thought, “I wonder what would happen if I changed the name on my resume from Jose to Joe”. Thank god my last name isn’t a dead give away like Gomez of Martinez or I might still be unemployed.
July 11th, 2008 at 1:46 am
gopher65
All I can say is that my wife (caucasian) has never been asked to show ID when using a credit card (at least in the US). We have the exact same credit cards. I mentioned earlier that I’ve never been asked to show ID when I’ve been shopping with a white person, but that’s not quite true. It has happened twice buying groceries with my wife, but while I was paying, she was hanging back looking at magazines and didn’t appear to be with me.
If you want, try doing an informal survey of people (I have) on this. I’m pretty sure you’ll find a correlation between skin color and being ID’d.
I don’t know about your mom. That’s weird. Are you sure she’s not writing checks?
July 11th, 2008 at 6:20 am
@Jose:
“How are your lives negatively impacted by refraining from using a phrase or symbol that might be offencive to someone? Why the outrage?”
In my case it is because I am simply trying to protect all those people who wish to communicate using a perfectly good language from being restricted in their communication by a small number of other people who want to see that language distorted for no good reason.
My life would be negatively impacted because I would be denied access to some of my vocabulary, which reduces my ability to communicate effectively. Why should I be forced to find convoluted alternative ways of saying things that can be said more concisely using words that were designed for the purpose and are in reality inoffensive? I would object to that.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:56 am
I tried to look through all 100+ comments, but I might have missed where this was already pointed out. Please re-update to point out that the comment of the “white hole” was, indeed, a racial comment. This clip has the video of the meeting, and it is very clear what the intention was. Also, the part near the end where JWP points out that black is used to denote “bad” things makes it even more clear.
http://www.myfoxdfw.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=6953163&version=5&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=1.1.1
July 11th, 2008 at 11:33 am
The Black Hole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc1zGRUPztc
July 11th, 2008 at 11:44 am
Nope Jose. I don’t know exactly what the reason is why she gets IDed and I never do. Just like I don’t know the reason why I can walk into a club with 5 other people and every one of them gets IDed, including the 40 year old, and I don’t (I’m 24, and I look 24:P).
People use numerous cues, visual and otherwise, to decide which people are worthy of their trust. I generally fall into that category. Whether it is ID cards or people telling me their life stories after knowing me for 5 minutes, it just happens.
Now I’m not saying that racism doesn’t happen. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in both Alaska (2 years in highschool) and Oklahoma (visiting my parents). In Alaska there weren’t many weeks that went by were there weren’t Native gangs ganking someone because one of the white gangs had scrawled a swastika on the wall of a bathroom, or vise versa with the white gangs. In OK, at this very moment, if you go out and ask someone about Obama, you have a decent chance of being informed that they, “won’t vote for no black man”.
So I’m not under the mistaken impression that racism doesn’t exist. I *am* under the impression that both sides make extensive use of racism as a weapon; in order to keep that weapon powerful, it has to be fully loaded with ammo (new cases of racism). Instead of dealing with the REAL racism in places like Oklahoma, stuff like this “black hole” comment is manufactured. Why? Because this is easy, and dealing with real racism is both hard, and not politically correct.
After all, every time I say that the southern US is racist I get blasted for using stereotypes without knowing what I’m talking about. Buddies, I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the southern states, and I was blown away by the overwhelming level of racism in those places. Those feelings aren’t completely unanimous among the population, but they are nearly ubiquitous in their strength across the slave states. Before I went there it had never occurred to me that people would find skin colour to be such a big deal.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
That is being more then sensitive. It sounds more like he does not like being black and wants to wipe that word from everyones toung.
July 12th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I always thought “white holes” referred to the reverse affect of blackholes; that is, holes in the universe that spew out as much matter as they have in them including light.
In any case, they should do more research on the matter of termenology (sp?) before making such a comment.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:47 am
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