[mhb]

That's great that sanity eventually prevailed, but it's not a compelling example of reasonableness that it was only after "Patton was removed from the class, investigated, and excoriated in a mass email." Now that we have set this important precedent that someone teaching Mandarin in a way that "confused" his students (who are learning Mandarin?) into thinking he was insulting black people, are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?

It's hyperbole to call this a slippery slope when the exact same thinking that finds niggardly offensive leads to the absurd outcome at USC. Instead of pruning the language of any words that a racist might use as a dog whistle, maybe expect, if not everyone, at least college students to have some notion of context.

[dahart]

Oh, sorry, how would you summarize your argument? I thought “consider where this sort of thinking might lead” was called slippery slope, but I’m happy to refer to it some other way.

> it’s not a compelling example of reasonableness

Why not? The outcome was positive, Patton suffered no serious consequences, and the ability to say foreign words without worrying was affirmed publicly. It could have been much worse, but it wasn’t. There was a temporary misunderstanding followed by some conversation that got it sorted out, no need to worry about that further. Again, the precedent that was set is that using Mandarin is not insensitive or racist. Precedent refers to the outcome, not the temporary misunderstanding. The outcome at USC was not absurd, the outcome was reasonable. The accusation might have been out of line, or just a mistake, but that was the cause, not the outcome.

> are there any other languages about which we should be concerned?

Why would there be? (…especially given the outcome of the USC story) If you read the USC response, you’ll even find it addresses that question directly. It affirms that incidental phonetic similarities across all different languages are pure coincidence and should not result in claims of wrongdoing. It even says the same thing you did, and takes responsibility too, it says college students should have some notion of global context, and it’s college’s job to give them that context.

The case that started this thread is not a cross-language mistake, and it came with evidence of historically racist usage, so it’s different by definition. It’s not the exact same thinking, and I posted some evidence of that. There’s no reason to believe the Mandarin incident will lead to more accusations, and due to being publicized and decided in Patton’s favor, there is reason to believe it won’t happen again, or if it does it will be settled quicker and with less publicity.

[mhb]

We can call it a slippery slope, if you like, but that generally suggests an imagined, often absurd end result. Not a demonstrated consequence of the exact facts causing a bad outcome.

I think it is easier, in hindsight, for you to say that Patton didn't suffer serious consequences. If I were in his shoes, being prohibited from teaching his class, disciplined for an absurd accusation and investigated, I would be pretty upset and wondering what the outcome would be.

If these were second graders learning a foreign language, maybe it is understandable that they might titter about a word in that language that is similar to one in English. I think it takes quite a bit of mental contortion to believe that students in a college foreign language class would think that a Mandarin word was insulting to black people because it sounds like an English word.

The reason this story is publicized is not because it's the valuable precedent you assert. It's that it is symptomatic of the ridicule deserved by the reasoning that people should be offended by words with similar sounds and different meanings.

Maybe it would be clearer if you read the whole thing: https://web.archive.org/web/20200922014834/https://www.theat...

[dahart]

So your argument is that we should ignore the actual positive “sanity prevailed” outcome, and instead only focus on imagining what it felt like to be incorrectly accused of racism, before being cleared? I’m sure that totally sucked for a minute, which is why he apologized, though he did have a pretty massive wave of support, both locally and nationally, before the investigation finished. Anyway… why does ignoring the outcome make any sense now?

I did read the whole article (btw please re-read HN guidelines), which was designed to stir and highlight drama, as newspapers are wont to do. You’re right, the Atlantic story you’re linking to is downplaying the precedent and focusing on the controversy. Even though there’s not that much controversy.

I also read some followup too, obviously, since I wrote some details above about the story that your source doesn’t mention, for example that Patton was not disciplined and was cleared and apologized to, and that the dean who “excoriated” Patten also had to publicly apologize for his hasty & presumptuous email, and admitted he reacted too quickly.

You seem to be insisting on incredulity and outrage, when feelings got out of hand but nothing serious actually happened. That’s kinda the same mistake Patton’s students made.

The school is required to take accusations seriously and investigate. That’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing. The dean handled it poorly at first, but people sometimes make mistakes. And it’s also good thing prof Patton was cleared. Almost everything worked like it should have. It doesn’t matter what you or anyone thinks about the validity of the student’s accusation, and the fact that the accusation happened is not somehow going to make anything worse.

Hey, it’s a free country, say whatever words you want, as far as I’m concerned, the consequences are yours to enjoy. You’re right that this shouldn’t have happened, and you’re right that the words we’re discussing did not originate from a racial epithet. But then history happened, replete with a lot of actual racism and words, and in reality new negative associations were formed between unrelated words. Bummer. But complaining about not being able to use one totally anachronistic word now that clearly sounds like a racial slur, and has been used as a racial slur, might seem a bit tone deaf. Arguing that choosing not to say one particular word is going to lead to many more and cause problems is an imagined and absurd end result.

[mhb]

> please re-read HN guidelines

OK. "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

Which is not what you're doing when you reduce the question to saying one particular word is the issue rather than only an example of blindly ignoring context. (Which is not even the case here since we're now offended by niggle, niggardly, niggard and 那个 and who knows what else). The issue is making the language less expressive at the instigation of 1) people who can't understand context and 2) sophomoric racists who take advantage of the people who can't understand context. Neither group should be rewarded by ceding the use of completely harmless and expressive words.

[dahart]

> who knows what else […] making the language less expressive

There’s that slippery slope again. English isn’t getting less expressive, that will never happen. That right there is the “imagined, absurd end result”. The number of English words that have become politically incorrect over our lifetimes is completely dwarfed by 1) the better, more expressive synonyms and alternatives available and 2) the number of new words introduced into English over the same period.

I hear you, and I agree that it’s stupid that a couple of previously unrelated words have become tainted, and they shouldn’t have been. But it’s too late, it happened… in this case, over a hundred years ago.

Nobody is being rewarded. Racist word usage doesn’t seek to remove words from our lexicon. The words don’t actually go away, the choice to use or not use certain words is yours to make. Whether we offer other cultures any respect by choosing to avoid any innocuous words that happen to have a higher probability of being taken the wrong way is purely a personal decision. Which is why arguing about it might not be the best look, even if you’re right, right?

[mhb]

When the end result has actually happened (advocacy for the avoidance of sound-alike words), it is no longer a slippery slope.

Anyway, there is value in trying to get people to understand that people who innocently use a sound-alike don't intend to offend them. Which is pretty much what John McWhorter has written about many times. The failure to understand context seems to be a big part of many issues of the day.