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Comment by stjohnswarts | Hacker News Reader

It sounds like he can sue for lost and potential lost salary for sure. This is not a legitimate reason to fire him if he was doing it innocently. Students could have said something and he could have avoided it I suppose. However whenever I hear the term "microaggressions" I know I'm talking with an idiot who values being emotional over being logical and just stop the conversation.

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It's apparently a common word, a demonstrative pronoun, similar to "that". Pretty hard to avoid without language acrobatics.

Did you watch the video of him using it? While it’s a very common phrase while speaking Mandarin, and while I do not think this is a fireable offense, the professor could have chosen one of dozens of other examples in his lecture very easily.

Dude I've lived in China and people just say it exactly like he said it in the video (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvnx1wcrbcg)

So you agree with censoring foreign words based on your own culture sensitivities.

Are you an expert in Chinese? What, in your opinion, is a suitable alternative example in Mandarin Chinese, then, that is commonly used by speakers of Mandarin Chinese?

I think this is all a huge overreaction. But I also watched the video and honestly it looked like he was saying it because he knew he could get away with it. That's the most likely explanation for why he picked Chinese as an example of another language's "um" word. Just IMO though, no way to know for sure. It was at least tactless. He knew how it would sound.

Why the need to judge and condemn here? If it’s such a common word in Chinese speech, have you considered that it may be a common word for him?

He's a white communications professor from USA, so no not really

From his CV[1]:

- "Professor Patton primarily teaches in USC’s Full-Time MBA Program and its Executive MBA Programs in the U.S. and China"

- "He has served as a key advisor to the Center for Asian-Pacific Leadership, a faculty member at the US-China Institute and a leader of MBA learning programs in China and Korea."

[1]: https://www.marshall.usc.edu/sites/default/files/gpatton/pci...

Or maybe he picked Chinese because it's the most well-known pause word of any non-Eurocentric language

I really don't think that Chester Pierce was an idiot who valued being emotional over being logical.

While there is disagreement over how prevalent they are or what if anything should be done about them, micro-aggressions obviously exist. I find this sort of hostility to the very concept perplexing.

This was not a micro-aggression. And to discount the existence of real micro-agressions is rather lacking in critical thinking skills.

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