NYTimes Peru N-Word: My side of the story, in four parts | Hacker News Reader

NYTimes Peru N-Word: My side of the story, in four parts

donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com

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Part 2: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

Part 3: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

Part 4: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

The referenced story: https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...

(Thanks djoldman and qnsi.)

I'll admit, I didn't read all four articles. I got about half way through the first one and was just wondering "I still have no idea what this is all about." Fortunately, the Wikipedia article on the author has a brief summary.

In particular, I thought this quote from the Wikipedia article really summarizes the differences between older and younger generations: "there is a profound difference between using a racial epithet in the course of a discussion about that racial epithet's use, and using a racial epithet to diminish or to wound someone."

For "socially conscious" people in my generation (Gen X), I think nearly all of us would find calling someone a racial epithet abhorrent. At the same time, while I understand culture has shifted and I wouldn't do it now, I still find it quite bizarre that the mere utterance of the epithet, even in a sentence like "You should never call someone a <racial epithet> because that is extremely offensive" is considered itself racist by younger people.

I recall hearing about a young popular YouTuber about a year or so ago who was accused of being racist simply for singing along to the lyrics of a popular rap song. Even more strange to me was that his defense (which was true if one looked up his Instagram video) was that he did NOT utter said epithet, in that he was singing along with the lyrics but when it got to that word he just skipped it and didn't say it.

I understand culture changes, but it still bothers me that we've gotten to the point where we completely disregard intent and focus instead just on the syntax of what was said. To be clear, I'm not sure if that's indeed what occurred in Mr. McNeil's case, but I certainly have seen it in other examples.

I find the current rapidly changing culture around the N-word fascinating, honestly. Decades from now, I'm sure sociologists will build entire careers on what we're going through. This is, I think, the first time in my life that I've seen a word in American culture become taboo.

By that I mean not that expressing the meaning of a word is forbidden, not the idea, but the utterance itself. If, like me, you tend to assume that cultures become more progressive and tolerant over time, this is an interesting very strong counter-example. Having a word that you that literally can't say even in quotation or reference implies something almost akin to magical thinking. As if the two syllables themselves, even when stripped of meaning, still have some kind of power.

What I think is happening is that (like almost everything) it comes down to group membership signaling. Progressive, anti-racist US culture has decided that not saying the N-word is a marker of group membership. If you say the word, even when simply mentioning it, it says that you didn't get the memo about not using the word. Therefore, you might not be part of the anti-racist in-group. And if you aren't one of "us", then you're probably one of "them". And therefore maybe even just mentioning the word becomes morally akin to actually using it.

You can look at this as similar to other arbitrary-seeming abstinences that groups take up. It is almost a feature that the prohibition is arbitrary because it emphasizes that the abstainer is doing so for group signaling reasons and not for pragmatic ones.

> What I think is happening is that (like almost everything) it comes down to group membership signaling.

That's one aspect of it, but from another perspective, this is a simple power play. Everyone with even modicum of intelligence understands the use-mention distinction, that there is a profound difference between quoting and using the word. Everyone understands that it is clearly wrong and stupid to attack someone as evil for mentioning the word, especially if they mention it in the context of telling people how wrong it is to use it.

Nevertheless, the person is still attacked. The goal is to make it clear to all people observing, that no matter how stupid and wrong it might be, they have full, unobstructed power to destroy anyone at will, under flimsy circumstances, so you'd better not ever cross them. That this is stupid and wrong is the entire point: anyone can attack, shame and destroy people for doing wrong, evil things, but only powerful people and ideologies can attack and destroy people for absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever.

> That's one aspect of it, but from another perspective, this is a simple power play.

I would characterize it more as a threat display with collateral damage. A power play implies that the thing you're using the power play on is the direct goal, but here it's more a signal to show that anyone can be taken down. Sort of like when the overlord kills a randomly chosen subjugant to send a message.

I do think there is an aspect of this to it, yes. I don't personally attribute any large scale organized (organized who?) intention behind. More that the emergent properties of our culture have left this new shiny machine gun laying on the floor and some people, for various reasons, are firing off a couple of shots.

We're living in a tumultuous time where power structures are changing. That tends to temporarily leave a lot of destructive toys around and people are going to scrabble for them and do a lot of harm before things settle back down. I hope that when they do we find that the power in the US has been distributed more equitably than it has in the past.

This should also demolish the argument that the use of the n-word in music and black culture has in any way "robbed the word of its power." Clearly the word terrifies and offends people, even if this offense is partially performative. It's not a feckless word.

It reminds me of this Monty Python skit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hlMK7tCks

"Now look, no one is to stone anyone until I blow this whistle. Even...and I want to make this absolutely clear...even if they do say "Jehovah."

"Everyone with even modicum of intelligence understands the use-mention distinction" --> so we can agree that the editors of the NY times don't have a modicum of intelligence. Why do people read this paper?

Here is an interesting blog on Political correctness and the use-mention distinction http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005349.h...

That's one aspect of it, but from another perspective, this is a simple power play.

It’s a framing exercise. You might think it is a harmless demand “don’t use word X” but it establishes the relationship psychologically as one party is dominant, even if the submissive party doesn’t fully realise it. And it’s quite naked once you look at it: the people making these demands simply want money, they haven’t got any coherent philosophy other than gimme gimme (and dindu nuffin).

"Itchy trigger finger" explains this far better than "they're out to get me", honestly. Sure, there might be some machiavellian individuals using this as an opportunity to attack others, but by and large it's clear to see this is more of an overcompensation by people trying to do the right thing.

>And if you aren't one of "us", then you're probably one of "them". And therefore maybe even just mentioning the word becomes morally akin to actually using it.

I've lost my once closest friend to this. I'm not current on the rapidly changing landscape of acceptable left expression, and apparently the far-right is able to taint any word they choose. The moment they use it, they own it.

We may agree on 70% of issues, but they've become so accustomed to their echo chamber that anyone with who speaks differently, let alone has a few different ideas, causes them emotional distress. They must be from the other side. They must be arguing in bad faith. Our beliefs are the best and everyone else is ignorant.

It's a cancer. As destructive as the attempted insurrection was, these types of people cause far more damage by alienating vast swaths of voter population with their petulance. They then turn their lenses against their elected representatives, offices teetering on the edge of a knife, demanding more and criticizing inaction.

These are destructive extremists with no end of people to blame, chastise, and criticize - except themselves.

"but they've become so accustomed to their echo chamber that anyone with who speaks differently"

This is one of the tragedies of English being a global language. Even the weirdest creeds can accumulate enough believers to create an echo chamber that grows beyond personal Dunbar number and envelopes the user completely.

Only about 11 million people speak my language and creating a perfect echo chamber is harder. Instead of 200 users, a particular set of viewpoints may only attract eight or so. But eight is a weak group and its members are constantly forced to interact with the rest of the world.

> apparently the far-right is able to taint any word they choose

Oh yes I hate this. I saw a long argument either here or on Reddit where someone made the tired old "something #2: electric boogaloo" joke as has been done for many years but it set off an alarm because some cosplay commandos used that phrase themselves for an operation so it's forever off limits.

It's one of many similar cases. How weak it is to just give up ground like that.

You're blaming the bad faith actions of the 'far right' on a thread about the bad faith arguments of the 'far left'?

I am empathetic: I have insane family members who believe Trump is God, and anyone who questions that is a Communist!.

But that inanity is easy for us to recognize - the harder part is to see it among those we would otherwise respect, like the NYT.

Having a word that you that literally can't say even in quotation or reference implies something almost akin to magical thinking.

The only thing I can think of that’s comparable is how Jews treat the divine name. I’d be uncomfortable to type it out in Hebrew even though I haven’t been religious for many years.

> The only thing I can think of that’s comparable is how Jews treat the divine name.

There is a major US legal case which touched on precisely this situation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_v._California , the "Fuck the draft" case.

Cohen stood accused of using the word. But at the beginning of oral argument, the Chief Justice euphemistically directed his attorney, Melville Nimmer, not to quote it when going over the facts of the case:

> I might suggest to you that as in most cases, the Court's thoroughly familiar with the factual setting of this case and it will not be necessary for you, I'm sure, to dwell on the facts.

Nimmer explicitly recognized, and intentionally misinterpreted, Burger's instructions:

> At the Chief Justice's suggestion I certainly will keep very brief this statement of facts [...]

> [...] may it please the court what this young man did was to walk through a courthouse corridor in Los Angeles county on his way to a courtroom where he had some business.

> [interruption]

> While walking through that corridor he was wearing a jacket upon which were inscribed the words "Fuck the draft", also were inscribed the words "Stop war" and several peace symbols.

Whether Nimmer could be allowed to quote the word "Fuck" in defending his client for expressing the message "Fuck the draft" was a major issue at the time. The Court attempted to forbid it but didn't quite have the power to do so.

And this is often credited with getting Cohen acquitted. Nimmer's ability to quote the word inside the hallowed confines of the courtroom dealt significant damage to the idea that using it on the way to the courtroom was punishable.

Somebody in an earlier discussion mentioned Monty Python's "Life of Brian": "No throwing rocks until I say so, I don't care who says 'Jehovah'!"

I legitimately do not understand this line of thought. The stuff is old, going through many translations, and editing passes, and printings. So the divine name must have been destroyed in printings multiple times. Has god smote anyone yet for this?

do you mean "yaweh" ??

all this reminds me of the way they treat the evil wizard's name "voldemort" in harry potter

Dunno about it being the first big taboo word. I find that the C-word [0] inhabits kind of a similar space. The demographics are different, and I suspect that more people overall view the c-word as highly taboo, both because the n-word has been to a larger extent than the other reclaimed within some Black subcultures[1], and because the US has significant populations who use it with the intent of either causing offense to the out-group or for signaling in-group status with their peers.

Meanwhile in England, C is still seen as quite a rude word, but the level of taboo is seemingly lower than in the US. NSFW language exchange discussion: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/7059/why-is-cnt-...

I’m not a historian, but I recall reading that a century or more ago, religious blasphemies occupied a similar space. Innocuous-sounding exclamations like “jeez!” and the half-archaic “zounds!” are evolved from the formerly-taboo “Jesus!” and “God’s wounds!” respectively.

Back then, taboo was concerned with offending/demeaning God, and now taboo is concerned with offending/demeaning black people and women. I see this as an improvement, because insulting God is between you and God, while insulting people can cause real harm to them.

[0] https://youtu.be/cR2tp5j5xD0 (Arrested Development clip, I’m still a little surprised they got this past the censors. Mild NSFW?)

[1] I don’t mean to imply that it’s largely accepted, it’s just that in my experience N is more widely-used publicly by some Black subcultures than C is used publicly by women who are in feminist subcultures. It has not been reclaimed to the same extent.

I don't find that to be true for the c-word (American here).

I'll edit out of respect for the low-profanity nature of HN discourse, but if someone said "Jan had a falling out with Marcia after she called her a meddling c#nt", that wouldn't phase me. I would find it amusing and childish if someone said "c-word" as a mention, in a context where an f-bomb would not be out of place, which is most adult conversation.

Yeah calling someone a daft c#nt isn't something we really do here, and it's about as misogynistic as insults get, but by contrast: white Americans really do take pains to never pronounce the n-word, use, mention, singing along with the radio, or under any other circumstance. No white American would complete the sentence, "as Muhammad Ali put it, 'no Viet Cong ever called me...'".

It's an actual taboo, at this point: it is simply never to be said, and it's tough to make a living or complete an education after a single offense, if made in public or documented.

Edit to add: I did say "no white American" but there's a certain subculture who do, and I have no idea what to call them now, since the name itself is pretty offensive. We would sometimes refer to them as Wegroes to be droll.

Well, as just one data point, I have never heard the phrase "The C Word" until I read your post, and honestly wasn't exactly sure which word you were referring to until I read further. I don't think it's anywhere close to the same level of prohibition as the N word.

> while insulting people can cause real harm to them.

How so?

You might be amused to hear about the purported Gaelic origins of Holy Cow and Gee whillikers then.

I think what has happened is a lot of trolls and provocateurs, both online and offline, have purposefully attempted to use the word in demeaning ways while also claiming innocence. "Testing the boundaries," so to speak.

"But it's just a picture of a cartoon frog holding a gun! I didn't post it because the user above me said they were black, I just think it's a funny meme! Honest!"

One logical response is to take a harder and harder line against Pepe memes, including ones that really were posted in good faith!

> By that I mean not that expressing the meaning of a word is forbidden, not the idea, but the utterance itself. If, like me, you tend to assume that cultures become more progressive and tolerant over time, this is an interesting very strong counter-example. Having a word that you that literally can't say even in quotation or reference implies something almost akin to magical thinking. As if the two syllables themselves, even when stripped of meaning, still have some kind of power.

I don't know that the people who leveled accusations against this guy are completely equating "usage" and "meta-usage".

I do know that there are people who view "meta-usage", particularly in casual conversation, as problematic. The n-word is viewed by them to have connotations of severe power imbalance and violence, particularly in the mouth of a white person. The idea that they should have to hear the word in casual conversation, without warning, whether it's intended to wound or not, is contentious. Intent matters, but so do the words themselves. To put it in your terms, some words cannot just be "stripped of meaning" to some people.

I personally empathize with people who feel this way, despite being a white guy for whom no such word with such visceral effect seems to exist. Even if discussing racism in a conversation, I probably just wouldn't whip out a historical quote from someone that happened to have the n-word in it. And I don't think that's as ridiculous as you're making it out to be.

Nobody is suggesting that contextualized, or (ideally, to some) forewarned, meta-usage will never have its place. But that's not really what happened in this story, is it?

Its not even the word, it's the syllables apparently.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...

I don't think this is a new thing. I was raised in the 90s in a very suburban area and I never heard the n-word spoken and it was always censored when spoken when we read To Kill a Mockingbird.

That is a reasonable and sensitive way to handle it. Things have change though, now To Kill a Mockingbird is being removed from curriculums for being racist.

https://www.newsweek.com/kill-mockingbird-other-books-banned...

When in the 90s? I am very positive that the very first time I heard "The N word" as a euphemism for the actual epithet was from Johnnie Cochran during the OJ Simpson trial in 1995. I remember thinking that sounded awkward at the time because people would say things like "the F word" or "the S word" to substitute for those well known curse words, but "the N word" was brand new to me.

I'm not saying Johnnie Cochran invented the term, but in my suburban area I had never previously heard that.

I don't think this is all that unprecedented. I think a fair number of curse words today were perceived as much worse in the past, especially when they invoked a sense of blasphemy in some contexts, or dishonor in another.

Fuck is not much of an effective curse word in many contexts as people don't care if its said.

> Fuck is not much of an effective curse word in many contexts as people don't care if its said.

Of course, it depends on where you are.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/25/613750683/epis...

In which a man who had volunteered a year of his life to help a community was almost driven out of town because he accidentally dropped the F-bomb in a moment of frustration.

> I don't think this is all that unprecedented.

If you can point to a time in American history when one's livelihood and reputation could be utterly destroyed for uttering a 'magic incantation', I'd like to hear about it.

Oh wait - I remember now, something in Salem in the late 17th century?

> What I think is happening is that (like almost everything) it comes down to group membership signaling.

This reminds me of something I've observed on Tiktok. The site has trends where they put an audio clip over a video of the poster and then different people perform the same trend to the same audio.

A hugely disproportionate number of the audio clips, something like half, contain the N-word. They're not just random snips from random rap songs, but the specific songs that contain the word and that specific section of the song.

Now I'm thinking it's virtue signaling. They choose that clip specifically because it contains the word and they can demonstrate themselves not saying it when they say the rest of the clip.

Or, if you want to go the other way, that the Tiktok algorithm is promoting those clips because they're owned by China and trying to sow discord or promote signaling mistakes by future leaders which can then be used to cancel them at will.

> I've seen a word in American culture become taboo

Especially one that sees such frequent use (but only by specific people).

> This is, I think, the first time in my life that I've seen a word in American culture become taboo.

I've known that the N-word is one I'm entirely not allowed to say since the mid nineties. I was raised in a conservative household. This isn't a new thing, is it?

Using the word has been taboo for a very long time, but mentioning it has not been. Plenty of respectable people have mentioned the word and kept their careers. Here's a talk that linguist Steven Pinker gave at Google in 2007 where he mentions the word.[1] Later in the Q&A he says, "I don't swear. I talk about swearing. Any of you who have taken philosophy will recognize the use versus mention distinction."[2]

It's utterly bizarre that so many people today refuse to recognize this distinction. I think this video has only stayed up because nobody has brought it to the attention of the public. Pinker would never be able to give that talk today, and Google would never have uploaded it to YouTube.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU&t=30m05s

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU&t=1h02m45s

The South Park Naggers episode was from 2007. I don't believe any network on TV would dare greenlight that episode today.

Not to my knowledge. Been pretty taboo since at least the mid-80s

I went straight to the Author's Wikipedia page to get the tl;dr version of what he allegedly did. The Wikipedia article has the n-word in it. And I don't mean "n-word", I mean the actual word.

From Wikipedia (censorship mine) "The Daily Beast reported that multiple participants accused McNeil of repeatedly making racist and sexist remarks, including the use of the word "n-----" in the context of discussing racist language,"

There's something very bizarre about the state of things when he is punished for asking someone "Did you say n-----?", but then using the word in its fullness when reporting on what he said is permissible.

[Edit: Spelling/grammar]

Back in highschool the n-word was a daily occurrence because my school was 60% black, 20% hispanic, 10%white, 10% asian. It was also the mid 90's and gangsta rap was en vogue. I remember an occurrence in shop class where a student used the n-word to greet his friend when the teacher became infuriated and told the student to "Please stop using that word. Its insulting to all of us of african descent." The student being the usual class clown he was responded "You mean NI*" shouting the n-word. Everyone laughed. The teacher just shook his head. Another time some of my classmates were singing lyrics to an Onyx song (judicial use of the nword in bakdafukup) and were messing with me saying "come on, sing with us, just say the word" I was petrified to say the n word and they laughed that I wouldn't say it "Oh the white boy is scared to say n** hahaha." Though they finally cracked me and I did sing along and they cheered when I said it. No big deal. Another time a white teacher was also upset with the use of the n-word that she strait up said to the student "So if I said to you 'whats up n**' you would not be offended?" the student casually said "nah its cool now." Times have changed.

Though casually the n-word is used all the time. My puertorican tenant (commercial) uses the n-word with his black coworkers in normal conversation. Even my Guyanese friends use the n-word among each other and their black friends.

So when I read articles like this I am befuddled.

I went to a school with similar demographics and had a similar experience hearing the N-word. I'm not sure if the culture there has changed but it definitely seems to be more taboo nationwide now.

That school still had integrating to do. The black kids and the white kids didn't mix, and most of the AP classes were nearly entirely white. I wish more effort were focused towards solving the structural issues of racial equality.

It is a function of privilege. The more privileged the more the person feels confident being outraged. Something weird about people is the less problems they have the more problems they make up.

Hence the Karen meme. It is pointing out how the most privileged class of humans in the history of the world (35-45 year old white women) are also the most aggressive and easiest to be outraged by "injustice".

This is hardly a realistic take. Claiming white women are drinking from some firehouse of 100% privilege is provably false with even low effort research. Claiming Black folks suddenly have some strange privilege is also probably false, and though the article doesn't mention it, I'd be willing to bet most of the people casting stones in this story are white.

The NY Times accidentally exposed this whole charade when they attempted to justify McNeil's firing by saying "intent doesn't matter".

People immediately started pointing out all the instances where another NY Times writer (Nikole Hannah-Jones) has used the N-word. Many of those instances are tweets that she has only very recently deleted: https://web.archive.org/web/20210211163617/https://twitter.c...

Yeah, I'm also Gen X and have noticed the same. I have a hard time comprehending incidents like this:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54107329

(professor suspended for saying a Chinese word mistaken for the epithet, in context that clearly identified what he was saying, on video)

> (professor suspended for saying a Chinese word mistaken for the epithet, in context that clearly identified what he was saying, on video)

It's even more ironic: he was teaching a class on international communication, and used it as an example of how you shouldn't jump to judgment of people from other cultures/languages. Cue his students doing just that.

I mean, its not even ironic how racist (against Chinese) the response to that was :(

I always found it amusing listening to my Chinese colleagues chat, because it always sounded they were talking about "n**as" and "young hoes." They were tickled pink when I explained this. I forgot what phrase they were saying that I heard as the latter but I remember it being very common in conversation.

There's also a long funny history with the use of the word "niggardly" (which means "stingy" and is in no way related to the racial epithet):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word...

Still, Aziz Ansari has a hilarious bit about that ("Umm, you could have just said cheap or stingy.")

I mean, perhaps it was used in the past in a straightforward manner, but using that word today almost sounds a bit like the equivalent of "Look I'm not saying the N-word but haha it sounds exactly like the N-word so I can get away with it wink wink." It's like the "I'm not touching you!" game that 7 year old siblings play.

How far should we push this? I was watching someone (an American because I guess it's relevant) narrate a game on stream and he wouldn't say "niggling" out loud.

Sure, but this is an effect of people getting upset about it.

Start from any perfectly neutral expression X, and if people insist enough that it should not be used because it's offensive, then using it becomes a statement- either of indifference for the supposed offense or of active participation in it. The only way to use that expression innocently is to be completely unaware of the controversy around it- otherwise the expression has become tainted whatever your intention in using it.

Maybe as a society we shouldn't focus too much on what those under the drinking age think of as offensive. If they are your target audience, sure, you'll need to pander, but for most, it really is only as consequential as you make it.

I honestly don't think our norms have changed much, which is backed up in a few studies. I think, more than anything else, we've decided that outrage is worth attention. Thanks ad revenue.

But it's not just those under the drinking age who were offended. If you read the whole story it sounds like he was fired in part because some of his black colleagues at the New York Times also said they were offended and that they would no longer be willing to work with him.

Sometimes you pull a short straw and end up with shitty coworkers. I've worked with groups of people that were uniformly high functioning and understanding, and other groups that dwelled on political positioning and avoided work at all costs. Happens in every industry, some more than others.

The New York Times is a highly influential newspapers, and who draws the short straw at that workplace and why is capital-p Politics.

Do you keep in your mind that their joutnalists have a figurative gun to their head when you are reading their articles? No? Maybe you should.

I think if you are white, you can engage with this entirely as an intellectual debate, or think of it as not a big deal.

It's easier then to forget that it's a word still used regularly by people committing violent hate crimes against Black folks, and those cheering them on.

According to the author's version of events his colleagues were offended by a description that was inaccurate to point of falsified (again, according to the author), and their outrage was conveyed by someone who may have been looking for excuses to get rid of him for years.

Perhaps they would have been offended by his actual words, but it seems at least plausible that if they read and believed his version of events they would no longer be offended. It also seems potentially plausible that their outrage was exaggerated by the NYTimes lawyer.

I'm not defending his colleagues (or him), just responding to the GP comment's suggestion that ignoring the complaints of those under the drinking age might not be relevant.

Part of the problem is that it’s okay to say those words and make money off those words, if you’re part of the in-group. But if you’re not part of it, then it’s forbidden. This duality prolongs misuse. )do as I say, not as I do)

I agree epithets are uncouth and should be avoided. BUT I think they should be avoided by EVERYONE. And anyone who uses them freely should face scorn.

There are epithets for just about any group. I’m inclined to think all the in-groups denounce internal use of the derogatory terms. For example the R-word. I doubt it’s welcomed to be used internally.

That said I would make an exception for meta usage. Nothing should be so toxic it cannot be uttered in any context.

I think this is completely wrong. Use of charged words is governed by Trust. You have to trust the speaker that they are not using the word in a hurtful way - that they are either using it in jest, or for historical purposes, or for meta purposes.

However, if there is no trust between the audience and speaker, almost any use can be misunderstood. In the particular example from this article, it's not that hard to imagine that him repeating the description the girl gave, but replacing 'the N word' with 'n*r' was not an attempt to be gratuitously shocking or even making fun of their use of more PC language (and not, as I do believe his intention was, an attempt to clarify what had been literally said). They already didn't trust his judgment on issues of race, and they had no idea of his vast experience and institutional standards of when it is acceptable to use this word.

Another note is that, when you don't know what level of trust there is between your audience and you, it's better to err on the side of caution. For example, I don't think it would have been smart of me to use the full word here, because the HN audience doesn't know me and I haven't established my well meaningness and care with such matters. In fact, even if I had established such a reputation, it would likely be a bad idea, since HN is also constantly visited by many first time viewers who would be unlikely to know of said reputation and may well take my use of it as being needlessly hurtful or careless.

> Part of the problem is that it’s okay to say those words and make money off those words, if you’re part of the in-group. But if you’re not part of it, then it’s forbidden

Come now. Surely you can call your father "my old man", "that codger", "the dotard"; and call your wife "the ball and chain", "that ol' battle-axe"; but you will take offense if strangers and friends did that? Even when you call your father and wife these names in loving jest. This hangup in understanding who is allowed use of a word is perplexing, it's almost like a reflexive obtuseness.

I always say "the N word", because the word itself is so ugly to me, as are all racial epithets. There was an incident where someone use the word "niggardly" meaning stingy, and somebody took pearl-clutching offense, and the original speaker retorted that he wasn't going to censure himself because of someone else's stupidity. Amen to that!

> Come now. Surely you can call your father "my old man", "that codger", "the dotard"; and call your wife "the ball and chain", "that ol' battle-axe"; but you will take offense if strangers and friends did that?

This isn't the same comparison. Everyone (baring the obvious exceptions) has a father that they could make words with, or could have a spouse to do the same. These examples are not the same as there being a word you must never say, in any context whatsoever, based on the circumstances of your birth.

> These examples are not the same as there being a word you must never say, in any context whatsoever, based on the circumstances of your birth.

But there is no such word. The NYT itself uses the N word in certain contexts, but not in others. The context has nothing to do with the color of the reporter's skin ("race"). However, using the word while discussing with teenagers (who aren't typically very good with nuance) who were already concerned about your opinions on race (so already somewhat hostile and likely to misinterpret your words) is a faux pas, an error in judgement.

From my perspective (not an American, but an Haitian) I think it's based on how much you trust the well meaning of the person behind it. The current social climate is very charged from an outside perspective as privilege is perceived being tied down to ethnicity (For us it is wealth which was correlated to skin color, but not so much nowadays).

Our own translation 'nèg' is pretty much synonym to person or dude. and it is widely used. But it does not have much connotation to the actual skin color of the person or his physical appearance. But it is still very uncomfortable to hear the French 'nègre' as this has a widely demeaning connotation (French colonization and slavery).

And I think that is why the actual restriction took place. If you're black and say the N word, it is unlikely to be demeaning, but if you're caucasian, there is a lot of past events that is not in your favor.

P.S. not a native English speaker.

For anyone to use it as part of their everyday vocabulary would be very problematic for them. This journalist uttered it in asking for clarification. “Did the person actually say ‘literal quote’?”

It’s like being offended by being asked by an investigator to describe a personal crime. Of course reviewing the trauma is not pleasant, but it may be necessary to establish facts. “Did they do this to you; what did you say to them, how did they respond, etc”

You're still ignoring the problem of trust. If I am explicitly avoiding a word but you chose to repeat what I'm saying but explicitly use it, this can be taken as lack of care or even explicit hostility if there is a lack of trust.

To exaggerate the situation greatly, imagine a black man filing a harassment complaint with a white sheriff in the deep south. The black man is saying "they called me a racial epithet", to which the sheriff replies "you mean they called you a n*r?". Do you think the black man would be unjustified in feeling more uncomfortable and not being sure that the sheriff is not trying to demean him?

This is true for all groups, though: black, white, Asian, gay, Romani, Irish, Jewish, Catholic -- all of them. And it's a matter of degree. I'm pretty sure a white guy in Appalachia doesn't like being called a cracker (or maybe that's one of the C words) by other white guys in Appalachia, but he really doesn't like hearing this word come out of the mouth of a black person or a coastal, urban white person, or a tree hugger or whatever. And this isn't a new thing, either. It's just that people are more vocal in their irritation. People act like this is some new invention. It's not. People have never liked hearing people in some group who they feel has unearned power over them use the epithets that encapsulate and symbolize this relationship. Maybe it's wrong, but it's a common feature of people generally.

This is a poor example, even here you are free to say "cracker" but you do not say "n-word". I'm not either, there is so much fear even in this thread about using that word because the fallout is unknown.

I would say that this thread is proof enough that we all live in fear of using this word even while using it in meta discussions.

I said it was a matter of degree. The point I was making is that it is universally true that people don't like to hear people from groups who they feel oppress them use those words that symbolize this oppression but they don't mind as much (though they still do mind) hearing these words used by people in their own group. The n-word is an example of this. Is this pattern more pronounced with the n-word? Sure, but the degree and length of the oppression experienced by black people at the hands of white people in the US is quite different from that experienced by hillbillies. And my point in choosing the term "cracker" was just to pick an example from the other side of the skin tone divide in the US, because the people complaining about how unfair it is that some people can say the n-word and they can't are typically from this demographic. I figure this example might hit close enough to home that they'd see my point.

I’m not disagreeing with you but I would say that to make this less prevalent the in-group should also shun its use internally. If you sell something as part of popular culture, don’t be surprised if you see it used in popular culture.

> R-word

I'd like to buy an "E".

also, as Stephen Fry famously said, “It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

It does serve a purpose. It announces to everyone in their vicinity that this fragile human is deficient and should only be interacted with via great caution.

edit: I don't understand the downvotes here. Is it considered poor manners to point out that people don't get to control how people perceive them?

Not 100% sure why you were being down voted.

Maybe you should state more explicitly the premise, which is that if you are easily offended you might have a weak mind. I think it is reasonable to discuss this point, as it may have some merit.

That quote always bothered me. Does that mean that Fry doesn't care about other people's feelings? He sounds like an a-hole.

The unbridgeable gap here is that the speaker of a phrase cannot with 100% certainty know whether a phrase will cause offense - "being offended" lives in the listener's mind. So we have to fall back to a "reasonable person" presumption. To do otherwise is to cede all control of public conversation to people who wield bad-faith claims of offense as a weapon.

If I say something, and have a good-faith belief that no one would be offended by it, and 99.99% of people agree that it was not an offensive statement, but one person claims to be offended by it - should I be forced to apologize under pain of being branded an "asshole"?

For the sake of argument let's say I'm offended by your "just asking questions" style statement that "Fry doesn't care about other people's feelings". Do you think it would be reasonable for you to apologize to me or retract your "question"?

I agree with you but i think Fry said it poorly and too many people are using this quote.

In the professional office environment this is exactly how it works. There is no "reasonable person" because it only takes 1 to go to HR.

Something similar recently happened in my kids school district.

In a staff meeting they were talking about what books were and were not allowed to be taught from. A teacher brought out a book and said roughly "So this book, written by a black author, stocked in our school library I can't teach in class because it contains the word n**."

Cue rich white people fighting over who was the most offended by this in our school district that is is ~1% black, and most of whom have fled nearby schools that were majority latinx.

>I still find it quite bizarre that the mere utterance of the epithet, even in a sentence like "You should never call someone a <racial epithet> because that is extremely offensive" is considered itself racist by younger people.

It isn't, it is found offensive by crazy people.

This situation is very similar to what caused the chief communications officer at Netflix to get fired: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/22/business/media/jonathan-f...

I agree with your take on intent mattering and I'm of a similar age. I suppose some of the backlash is to remove plausible deniability of dog whistling, but it's gone further than I think is reasonable. Besides, an honest person will apologise unreservedly when called out on accidental usage, whereas a dog whistling racist will tend to backtrack and mumble excuses.

Anyway, you can still say a lot of harmful stuff without using a specific word if you want. I don't see the point.

> I recall hearing about a young popular YouTuber about a year or so ago who was accused of being racist simply for singing along to the lyrics of a popular rap song.

Oh it gets sillier than that.

"The rapper invited the woman, who identified herself only as "Delaney", to sing M.A.A.D City during his set at the Hangout Festival in Alabama.

But Kendrick stopped her after she repeatedly used the N-word - which is heard multiple times in his song.

As the crowd reacted angrily, Kendrick told her: "You gotta bleep one single word."

https://www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-44209141

It’s a power play. Having a word that you can say, but others, under penalty of termination and ostracism, dare not utter, demonstrates that you have some power over them and raises your status. (Some people don’t grasp this dynamic and take the stated rational for the prohibition at face value.)

This article has the best summary I've seen. It has less to do with the academic usage of a slur and more the arrogance and forcing everyone to agree with your POV and telling them how they should feel. It wasn't simply an utterance but their unwillingness to listen to opposing views. As well as some allegations that the n-word had been used much more casually by the same offenders at other times. It makes the academic argument seem disingenuous.

https://defector.com/mike-pesca-slate-suspended/

The only thing that is disingenuous is this argument. It has nothing to do with arrogance and everything to do with virtue signaling and fascism. Telling people how they should feel and unwillingness to listen to opposing views goes both ways.

The easy way to tell that it’s disingenuous? Search this on Google:

site:nytimes.com "nigger"

Appearing in print in his same publication as recently as 2018, 2019, and even December of 2020. So it was fine to print in appropriate context before he said it, and after he said it, but that particular week it was racist and unforgivable. Pretty clear what’s really going on here.

All the uses I see are direct quotes, archival from the 19th century or a discussion of censoring huckleberry finn.

Yes, it is clear.

A cultural moment that is causing a re-evaluation on how the word is treated.

Dismissing it as "virtue signaling and fascism" is a cheap way to avoid the actual debate.

I don’t think you read my comment. The NY Times is still using it in print in the same context. This was virtue signaling and fascism. A debate involves engaging with another party in good faith, not conspiring to get them fired before a conversation even happens. That is a cheap way to avoid the actual debate.

What is the actual debate? The magic n-word Im so offended by the sound fainting couch crowd seems to only be using it as an excuse to go after people they already don't like. Here's Joe Biden using the n-word in a quote yet not a peep from the re-evaluators of this cultural moment.

https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-9146840045

I think if you place the word in a bigger context that many people just seem to realizing, is that racism, particularly against black people in the US is still common. In fact, in some circles it seems to be becoming ok to be openly racist. People are sensitive, sometimes overly sensitive, because we are not in some post racism utopia.

There's also been an increase in violent hate crimes. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/16/935439777/fbi-report-bias-mot...

I studied free expression in grad school and worked on advocacy in the tech space related to free expression, it's a topic I'm qualified to teach, and I have a lot of theoretical and practical experience to share with students. However, out of the most basic sense of self-preservation I would never consider teaching the topic and barely delve into it, even when teaching tech policy. I think the students are worse off for it, but it's not worth taking the career risk.

What is free expression and where can I read more about it?

Broader take on free speech to encompass more forms of communication more-or-less. Consent of the Networked by Rebecca MacKinnon is a very good book on the subject vis-a-vis tech/regulation/etc.

Some more context:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/02/behind-the-scenes-of...

I get the impression that this guy was a bit of a jerk as well, and his response ultimately turned what could have been a short and easily forgotten news cycle into him burning his bridges at the Times.

You're right, it didn't really get to the point until midway through the third part. If you get through all of it, the message is that NYT leadership opportunistically used a tabloid's hit piece on a cold story about an issue the NYT themselves claims they had already internally addressed as an excuse to oust a labor organizer.

Is there a difference between calling someone a word and using the word to make a point about that word? More importantly, is it relevant for me as a non-POC to dictate how this word affects someone else?

Singling out a student as a target of an insult is nothing like the situations under discussion. If a teacher said "How would Ronnie feel if I accused him of fucking his sister" the biggest problem isn't the use of the word "fucking."

> Is there a difference between calling someone a word and using the word to make a point about that word?

In my opinion, yes, absolutely, there is a gigantic difference. Though I certainly understand that times change and a large segment of the population no longer feels that way.

Yes, yes there is. And that is your own prerogative to decide how much you want to self censor.

> I still find it quite bizarre that the mere utterance of the epithet, even in a sentence like "You should never call someone a <racial epithet> because that is extremely offensive" is considered itself racist by younger people.

The idea that utterance of a word is offensive isn't uncommon. For example, in the US the C-word is almost completely taboo in common speech. In some other English-speaking countries it is just another swear word, perhaps more offensive than the F-word, but not in a completely different category.

And then there is Scotland, where they claim it to be a term of endearment

It's peak virtue signaling and the low quality of communication of the internet. Maybe a bit of cultural effect from harry potter. The negative connotations of the word itself are only a portion of it.

I'm sure once this fashion is done academics will analyze it to death. I wonder how they'll mention the word on their titles though. Some future populist politician will also take the findings and abuse them as well.

I kinda wish people in those racial classes for whatever <epithet> represents could find a way to instead of blacklist the word which ultimately gives it more power to embrace it.

Say BLM for instance if they had people of all colors saying I'm an <epithet>... in some sort of markting videos... If you had the word become a different meaning instead of "stupid" lesser race, it can become: "strong, empowered" person of color with a strong identity.

Example: I watched the history of swear words (excellent show btw) and one very controversial word is: Bitch.

It's gone from bad to very bad to good to empowering to some women, and there's honestly a million ways and connotations to using the word.

Gay is another word that I think has become more powerful to the community for using it in more positive ways.

A word that cannot even be uttered becomes the pen-ultimate swear word for those who want to hurt someone. If it means as little as damn or shoot or crap - then it loses it's sting and I personally think we get closer to more racial tolerance.... but that's just me.

How do we get this accomplished? No effing clue and I wouldn't even want to broach the subject being a white guy who supports BLM and wants to be an advocate and not cast out. Like the author I'm autistic too and have that empathetic to a cause but bad at reading an audience or how bad things I say can have an effect.

And yet everyone gives a pass to popular actors like Leonardo Dicaprio who use racial epithets in movies.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1853728/characters/nm0000138

You're being sarcastic, correct? (these days it's hard to tell)

Dicaprio plays a brutal slave owner in that movie.

I'm not sure if you're aware, but Dicaprio was initially unwilling to use the n-word in the movie. It was only at the behest of his (black) costars that he did[0].

There's similar conversations about racially charged plays and the white actors who play racists that come up pretty often.

[0]: https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainment/how-samuel-l-jackso...

He was accused by multiple people of racist and uncomfortable comments beyond using the N word.

“I got about half way through the first one and was just wondering "I still have no idea what this is all about."”

He says what it’s all about in the first paragraph, and by 100 words in we have an outline of the whole write-up.

Huh? He mentions nowhere in his first paragraph, or first couple paragraphs for that matter, the reason for why he was fired, which seems like a rather important detail.

>He says what it’s all about in the first paragraph

I for one would not consider the paragraph:

"On February 5 this year, one week after an article about me appeared in the Daily Beast, The New York Times announced that I would be leaving."

a description of what it's all about. For what it's worth I already know the story, but if I didn't I certainly wouldn't have a clue from that paragraph.

>and by 100 words in we have an outline of the whole write-up.

The article is incredibly long-winded and has a difficulty getting to the point, in honor of which I should continue my comment, of which we are currently in the preambulatory phase, so yeah anyway, by 128 words we know:

that the document will be in 4 parts, the first part is the introduction and we're in it!

Something happened on January 28th!

What Happened During the Investigation? (there was an investigation of something!!, what was it, someone got murdered, we don't know yet, we're in the introduction, but hey this guy was the lead guy on reporting covid 19 pandemic and he started as a copyboy in 1976, imagine!)

What Happened in Peru? (something happened in Peru - was this after the murder investigation, don't know yet.)

but hey I guess we're done with the introduction so now we can find out what it's about!

Nope, we're still in the introduction. There are 963 more words were he tells you his reasons for writing on medium, gets flamboyant with the language about government corruption and gives examples of how words matter and he hates being misquoted etc. etc. I admit I didn't read very closely because it was uninteresting and as a consequence I find myself incapable of quoting him accurately.

so now - a thousand words in he ends the introduction with:

"I’ll tell my story in three further parts:"

This guy is not Dickens or Twain, and his rambling narrative is as interesting as someone whining about how their wife doesn't understand their drinking embedded in the middle of a TPS report. But hey 1000 words in and I have a good feeling we're gonna find out what happened with what I have to assume was a murder and some sort of freakout in Peru!! this is going to be epic!!!

He now lists the three further parts:

What Happened on Jan. 28 and Thereafter?

What Happened during the August 2019 Times Investigation?

What Happened in Peru?

Now this is truly WTF territory for me - is he going to list what he is going to write about at the end of each section?

So then he writes a couple hundred more words - he says he remembers what happened in Peru because of emails, but wait, before we find out about what happened in Peru time for a look backwards about being interviewed on a TV program where he said some stuff he thought might get him in trouble, but it didn't I guess because it seems like something else that happened in Peru got him in trouble. Oh man, I am starting to worry this is going to turn out not to be a murder story after all..

actually I don't think the margins of this comment box are vast enough for me to recount all the details of how he comes to actually reveal whatever happened in Peru! and the investigation, which here we are nearly 1500 words and he hasn't actually said what that was about either.

This guy tiptoeing around the subject is weird, is he trying to build suspense. You'd think he was trying to build suspense, and it was going to be the story about a voodoo cult, sex hippies, and a gun running cult! But it's so boring, it can't be that.

As one keeps reading and nothing happens there starts to form the suspicion that in the end Peru will be some boring snooze-fest, like maybe he used the n-word or something and got fired.

I write here instead of edit - when I say he's not Twain or Dickens I used them as my examples because they are two of my favorite authors and I've been rereading them quite a bit, also they are verbose and perhaps given to rambling.

This guy, a journalist, isn't Hemingway either. Which is a pity.

on edit: I also notice I expected him to have a couple cults in his story. Can't have too many cults, nor too many words in your comments describing how someone has to many words in their version of events attempting to win the public to their side.

That was entertaining.

I’m not defending the organization of the piece, which I agree is less than optimal, as well as super redundant. But’s it’s also an exaggeration to suggest that he doesn’t tell us what it’s about at the start: it’s about how he got canned because of an article in the Beast.

Nobody is actually offended by this sort of stuff, it's just one more weapon in the culture war.

Perhaps so, but it sure seems to be a weapon that's used indiscriminately. It's used against (almost[1]) everyone it possibly can be used against.

That is, this guy wasn't someone that the woke were perpetually looking for a chance to attack, and he finally slipped up and they got him. This guy was just someone that the weapon could be used against, and so it was used against him.

[1] I presume that there are people who would not be destroyed for using certain racial epithets. Rappers are certainly an exception (or else they just don't care). Politicians that the woke like seem to also be exempt, but the right tries to use the same weapon against them. But the weapon doesn't seem to work when the right wields it...

I think that to a great extent this is a matter of trust in the speaker. When an audience trusts the speaker's opinions, they can easily accept the use of problematic language as benign.

But when the speaker is not trusted, it's easy to take what to the speaker seems like benign use of a word the wrong way. For example, the speaker here believed they were just clarifying the use of a word, to distinguish between someone saying the literal phrase 'the N word' vs someone literally saying n**r. The speaker knows themselves to be above reproach and very conscious of their use of language, having often engaged in debate about appropriate VS inappropriate use of this word, with careful consideration etc. They are used to speaking to audiences who sees them in this way.

However, one day he finds himself doing this with an audience who doesn't know much about their antiracist credentials, and who is weary of him as someone who seems to be pretty politically incorrect. They are probably primed to see him as an establishment old white man, who is by virtue of this alone usually, in their (real or just imagined) experience, on the wrong side of history on this issue. One of them is probing him on a sensitive issue, and is careful to say 'the N word' since that is what is proper in their view. And here this man comes and feels the need to use exactly the word that should be avoided, perhaps condescendingly or because he just isn't aware of how hurtful it seems to them.

None of the parties is truly right or wrong here. The journalist didn't mean to cause any harm, and didn't think he could possibly be construed as meaning so. The kids don't trust his intentions are not easily convinced by nuanced debate. He should have known better than to use his usual discourse. They should accept that he knows better than them these topics and should know who to trust and who not to.

Note that this is exactly the reason why rap is one of the very few places where use of the N word has persisted. Rappers were trusted by their audience, and their use of it continues to be trusted in general. But if Sean Hannity used it, who would believe that he was not being malicious?

> That is, this guy wasn't someone that the woke were perpetually looking for a chance to attack

You sure about that? The opening of part one goes like this.

> I don't think I'm an asshole, but [describes some asshole behaviors].

To be clear, he sounds like an ass much like Theo de Raadt, Linus Torvalds, and Ulric Drepper are asses. Those people are my kind of jerk and I don't mind it so much since their signal-to-noise ratio is so high. But plenty of people do mind. He very well could have been painting a target on his back all that time.

>> But the weapon doesn't seem to work when the right wields it...

These are weapons of the left. Your supporters have to have the same mindset for them to work.

Policing speech is a weapon for everyone. How often did you hear swear words on TV 20 years ago? Do you think it was the left keeping 'fuck' out of year shot of any impressionable teens? Did the Dixie Chicks get canceled by the left for saying that they didn't support the war in Iraq?

At the basic level, does this even have anything to do with a "culture war"? More like it's simply a social weapon, apparently capable of moving the New York Times, being handed to teenagers. Of course some of them are going to pull that lever to test what they can do!

Of course people are actually offended by it.

> 1. Yes, I did use the word, in this context: A student asked me if I thought her high school’s administration was right to suspend a classmate of hers for using the word in a video she’d made in eighth grade. I said “Did she actually call someone a (offending word)? Or was she singing a rap song or quoting a book title or something?” When the student explained that it was the student, who was white and Jewish, sitting with a black friend and the two were jokingly insulting each other by calling each other offensive names for a black person and a Jew, I said “She was suspended for that? Two years later? No, I don’t think suspension was warranted. Somebody should have talked to her, but any school administrator should know that 12-year-olds say dumb things. It’s part of growing up.”

> 2. I was never asked if I believed in white privilege. As someone who lived in South Africa in the 1990’s and has reported in Africa almost every year since, I have a clearer idea than most Americans of white privilege. I was asked if I believed in systemic racism. I answered words to the effect of: “Yeah, of course, but tell me which system we’re talking about. The U.S. military? The L.A.P.D.? The New York Times? They’re all different.”

> 3. The question about blackface was part of a discussion of cultural appropriation. The students felt that it was never, ever appropriate for any white person to adopt anything from another culture — not clothes, not music, not anything. I counter-argued that all cultures grow by adopting from others. I gave examples — gunpowder and paper. I said I was a San Franciscan, and we invented blue jeans. Did that mean they — East Coast private school students — couldn’t wear blue jeans? I said we were in Peru, and the tomato came from Peru. Did that mean that Italians had to stop using tomatoes? That they had to stop eating pizza? Then one of the students said: “Does that mean that blackface is OK?” I said “No, not normally — but is it OK for black people to wear blackface?” “The student, sounding outraged, said “Black people don’t wear blackface!” I said “In South Africa, they absolutely do. The so-called colored people in Cape Town have a festival every year called the Coon Carnival where they wear blackface, play Dixieland music and wear striped jackets. It started when a minstrel show came to South Africa in the early 1900’s. Americans who visit South Africa tell them they’re offended they shouldn’t do it, and they answer ‘Buzz off. This is our culture now. Don’t come here from America and tell us what to do.’ So what do you say to them? Is it up to you, a white American, to tell black South Africans what is and isn’t their culture?”

I fundamentally don't understand why the Times didn't explain this early on. Not necessarily release these statements verbatim, but certainly provide some of this context.

The Times as presented in the medium posts was pretty clear about what they wanted: they wanted the story to quickly go away. They judged (likely rightly) that the fastest way to do so would be for the journalist in question to issue a broad apology that admits to some wrongdoing without any kind of detail. This could then be spun down into a non-story (some kids were offended by what this guy said, you know how kids are; he later apologized for the dumb stuff he said, you know how old people are). The Times didn't care in any way if the reporter would remain with a reputation of being a bit of a racist, and the last thing they wanted was to give a point by point rebuttal that could in turn be rebutted point by point and endlessly discussed in forums and articles.

I'm not in any way claiming they were right to want this, that they were right to fire him over not agreeing with this plan, or that anything that happened here is good and normal. I'm claiming that the motivations are pretty transparent, though.

I disagree their judgement was right - I think it was catastrophically wrong. there are some things that you can treat this way (let it blow over), but a reporter saying the n word to a group of high school kids is not one of them. the fact that it was only said in a question to clarify what someone meant, rather than than as a slur, is also wholly exculpatory - making the real story a complete non-issue. also, think about how it actually turned out -- their strategy completely backfired, insofar as it was actually intended to limit the pr damage of the story.

I for one had heard nothing of this story before seeing this article (though I'm neither a resident nor citizen of America, so this is not that meaningful). We also don't know what the story would have been had he apologized as they wanted (again, I'm not saying he had any obligation to do so! His reputation was rightfully more important to him than the desires of the NYT PR team).

Also, I don't agree that the context is wholly exculpatory and makes this a complete non issue. He was wrong in using this type of language with this particular audience, even if in a NYT article it would have been perfectly acceptable. He was misunderstood by the teens and seemed shocking to them, despite how he (or I, or you) views his own words. It would have actually been right to apologize to them, as he clearly failed in communicating the nuance he was trying to communicate. That's not to say that he is a racist! But he obviously misjudged his audience and caused them more harm than good with his words, even if he had the best intentions behind them. Especially since he was payed to be there and teach them, this is not some case of some teens finding someone's blog and taking offense at what they think is being said there.

I can see why most other corporations would behave like this even if it's not quite ethical, but the NYT crudely sweeping this kind of thing under the rug seems to more directly contradict their values and goals. I don't think it can produce honest, critical journalism if this is how it evaluates speech under attack. Journalism more than any other industry is vulnerable to this kind of shallow smear but it must bear it to do its job well.

> I fundamentally don't understand why the Times didn't explain this early on.

Sure you do! Context is not important in our age. Reaction is what matters. Let's hope we don't live to see the day when pre-action is what matters.

I agree that the internet age has made context more difficult, due to the sheer barrage of information it subjects us to.

But the above quote constitutes three medium-length paragraphs, and I suspect a couple of good editors could have synthesized that down further (possibly to the author's chagrin, but not to his detriment, if it was done properly). I do not believe we are that far gone.

> “Black people don’t wear blackface!” I said “In South Africa, they absolutely do. The so-called colored people in Cape Town have a festival every year called the Coon Carnival where they wear blackface, play Dixieland music and wear striped jackets. It started when a minstrel show came to South Africa in the early 1900’s. Americans who visit South Africa tell them they’re offended they shouldn’t do it, and they answer ‘Buzz off. This is our culture now. Don’t come here from America and tell us what to do.’ So what do you say to them? Is it up to you, a white American, to tell black South Africans what is and isn’t their culture?”

It should be pointed out that the "so-called coloured people" in Cape Town are/were know as "Cape Coloured" and defintely considered themselves NOT black (and were classed as seperate from black people by the Apartheid regime, indeed eventually getting the vote in 1982).

It should also be pointed out that it hasn’t officially been called the “Coon Carnival” in many years since “coon” is in fact a racist slur in South Africa, despite McNeil’s insinuation that it’s just an American thing.

Zulu marchers in New Orleans also wear blackface during Mardi Gras (and have invited some whites to). This has caused consternation, to say the least, among people not from New Orleans.

A can affirm the first sentence is true.

(I don't dispute the second).

> I fundamentally don't understand why the Times didn't explain this early on. Not necessarily release these statements verbatim, but certainly provide some of this context.

This message is too complex to be accurately relayed across the Internet. It's a virtual certainty that it will be mangled into headlines like "NY Times reporter uses racial slurs, denies systematic racism, endorses blackface." If you've played the children's game Telephone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers) then you have seen this in action.

The message they released was simple enough to hopefully cause the scandal to go away.

Taking down a vicious racist gets more clicks.

Someone in power at the NYT wanted him fired, and cynically used this as an excuse. You’re looking for good faith where there wasn’t any.

I do not know who this guy is.

I don't read the NYT.

I have a hard time reading long texts. I get distracted or bored real quick and switch to a different tab.

But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting. I'm sorry that this happened. This is a nightmare of mine. Someone gets a hold of some stupid thing that I said or did (as a joke back in college) or in this case as an honest attempt to explain stuff to teenagers, and now you have to go over every single word and explain yourself. and as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.)

There are a few situations I am extremely wary of — how I'm perceived when I'm interacting with children, being accused of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace, or being accused of being racist or otherwise bigotted.

These moments help me empathise with people who live their entire lives with that fear. On the whole I have it good. I can walk down the street without people assuming I'm looking for cars to break into. Or fly on a plane without people wondering if I am going to blow it up.

But at the same time I get the feeling that some people see those behaviours as punishment for my percieved privilege, and might even enjoy seeing me squirm. Which doesn't sit right with me. I think the answer to bigotry is to be aware of it, counter it, and fix it so we can lift everyone up. Rather than wield it as a weapon to cut down those you perceive as being unfairly advantaged by history.

The catch for me is that so much of what people consider privilege is effectively just skin color or other outward attributes. Yes, those are attributes that are discriminated on so we should be hyper aware of those attributes, but those aren't the only attributes that constitute privilege.

You absolutely cannot make the determination of someone's privilege just by skin color or hair or whatever else. It's impossible. You can make a generalized, probabilistic guess, but you don't know if a white person grew up in a leaky trailer with abusive parents, or if a black person grew up in an upper middle class family. You don't know if someone sleeps in their car, or if the bank won't give them a loan, or if they're chronically depressed or in pain. There are so many vectors to privilege beyond race. There's so much more to a person's position in society, whether cultural or economic, than can be determined just by looking at them.

And it seems to me that so much of "punishment" you speak about is directed towards people specifically based on outward attributes.

The old phrase "never judge a book by its cover" really does apply here.

> But these 4 articles were so interesting and horrifying to read I read them all in one setting.

Wow, I was barely able to get through the first part and honestly the whole time I was thinking "I can't believe this guy has been a professional writer for decades. He desperately needs help from an editor."

I find the content interesting, but the writing seems to wander unnecessarily and I wish he'd focus more on getting to the point than needlessly interject his, at least to me, obnoxious attempts to defend his character rather than let the audience decide for themselves. Yes, I realize the entire point of this article is to defend himself, but I'd rather read the meat of the story than variations of "I don't think I'm a bad guy."

To each his own.

Perhaps this guy really is doomed, because his defense depends on people being willing to read a long argument and understand nuance, when knee-jerk denunciations are usually so pithy.

Nah, Fox News will pull the juicy parts out into tweets and punched up articles soon enough.

The guy's problem is he's a terrible writer, which is pretty unforgivable considering his career. If he could articulate himself better I'd be interested to learn more about his story. Brevity is the way to go. This guy isn't Faulkner.

I'll regularly go hours into holes reading fascinating articles about obscure topics. I even wanted to learn more about this, but I just could not stomach his awful writing. He thinks he's more important than he is and he clearly does not know his audience, which is what got him into trouble in the first place.

He is legitimately a bad writer. He's not even mediocre. And the majority of comments here on HN seem to agree, and this is hardly the "knee-jerk" reaction forum of the internet.

> He desperately needs help from an editor.

Well, he did just get fired and lose al the editors he worked with for decades.

Goes to show how important editors are and writers really benefit from editors.

> but I'd rather read the meat of the story than variations of "I don't think I'm a bad guy."

Especially when he illustrates that with examples of him being the bad guy.

In what instance is he being _bad_?

I see instances where he makes perceptive mistakes and possibly cavalier. Bad? No.

If he’s _bad_ then if we look at the world at large, then over 50% of people are _bad_.

He’s more of a victim of a purity crusade by people who also are the same “bad” but either don’t see it, don’t admit to it, or are following a popular trend.

It reminds me of the cultural revolution where in order to save themselves neighbors, friends and family would denounce each other for doing “bad” (baselessly accused of being counterrevolutionaries) just to get ahead of being accused of doing “bad” things. In the end there was great injustice, but Mao got what he wanted out of it.

> In what instance is he being _bad_?

In his own words, he is an asshole some of the time

>> Am I really an asshole? I don’t think so. Not most of the time.

Many of us have worked with men like this and they're awful.

I mean, this example was pretty poor because it combines him being an asshole and his interpretation of the word "drug", Dictionaries disagree with him.

>> Now, there is an exception: if you’re an editor and you write an error into my copy, I can definitely be an asshole.

[...]

>> To give an example: an editor once went through a story of mine and changed all the references to vaccines to “drugs.”

>> I went over and said, “Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea what you’re doing? Vaccines and drugs are different. A vaccine is something you take to prevent illness. A drug is something you take when you’re already ill.”

Chambers:

> 1. Any substance used in the composition of medicine to cure, diagnose or prevent disease

Mirriam Webster:

> b: a substance used as a medication or in the preparation of medication c according to the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (1) : a substance recognized in an official pharmacopoeia or formulary (2) : a substance intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease (3) : a substance other than food intended to affect the structure or function of the body (4) : a substance intended for use as a component of a medicine but not a device or a component, part, or accessory of a device

Not commenting on this guy in particular but sometimes when people use long-winded stories to explain themselves, it's usually to hide something. Like hiding the truth in between embellishments. I don't know anything about this guy though so he maybe innocent of whatever thing he did? I skimmed over the article but still don't know what happened.

"I don't trust his writing style" is a fallacy of mammoth proportions.

Being a writer, he probably comes from a culture where people write lots of words and has many friends who respect people who write verbosely.

Someone's level of articulateness provides no information whatsoever of how truthful their writing is. There are countless extremely articulate lies told by people with mastery over their medium.

I also suspect that being an older journalist, he's accustomed to writing long-form content. There's a level of fluff and narrative crafting that is not at all appreciated in today's information saturated landscape.

You don't know what happened because you skimmed over it. Brilliant.

I think this is true when someone is speaking--liars often try to hide behind details which they think makes their stories believable and explains the discrepancies that they see in their own fabricated story. But I have the opposite perception of this narrative, I think it was written with the intention of being precise, and either his background as a journalist or the public nature of the issue are reasons enough to explain why he wrote with the detail that he did. I often try to write with precision and detail too, and it certainly doesn't mean I'm lying when I do.

It's pretty remarkable. Every time the writer says something like "let me back up and explain more" I understand less and less who the writer is and what happened to them (apparently they said or were accused of saying certain things in multiple unrelated situations?).

It was due to this:

A student asked me: “Do you think one of my classmates should have been suspended for using the N-word in a video from two years ago?”

I said: “Well, wait — what exactly happened on this video? Did she actually call someone “nigger”? Or was she just using it in passing, like quoting the title of a book?”

Because when he asked for context around how the person said “nigger”, he didn’t self-censor when making reference to the word.

That’s it.

That’s how bad this juvenile cancel culture mob has become. They let some 15 year old activist wannabe complain to the paper and get him fired.

This article comes across as very "inside baseball" i.e. the crowd who are intimately familiar with the ongoing melodrama in journalism, the history of the NY Times, etc. See his reference to his "until now anonymous comments in an internal Times report", for example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_McNeil_Jr.#Dismissal_fr...

Aye, same.

The gist is that he doesn't vibe with... someone?... and finds that his colleagues have wildly different expectations about... something?

Imagine next: the trolls start petitioning Medium to remove his articles and terminate his account for violating their policies and or Amazon for hosting Medium which hosts content published by "racists". Soon the only thing left for this life-long journalist will be mopping floors.

This may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better eventually.

If you're referring to that other guy whose social media accounts were terminated, it was because he incited his followers to storm an important government building, which left five people dead. So it's quite a stretch to suggest that may happen to anyone...

Is anyone actually calling for that, though? Because if not we're just conjuring up things to worry about.

> I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner. I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.

Fwiw, I've always found such statements insanely baffling - in an amused befuddled sort of way. Why would anybody want to spend their life with somebody to whom they couldn't explain themselves and or find common ground?

Because life shouldn't be spent afraid to apologize, or in constant debate about whether an apology is "required."

If you hurt someone, whether intentional or not, apologizing is the least you can do.

If you don't believe an apology is warranted, apologize, and sort though where the disconnect is later.

Apologies are frequently taken as admission and only fan the flames.

Its game over once you apologize. Never seen anyone recover from an apology. Never apologize to anyone who is unwilling to forgive you.

I meant in my personal life. I make a joke, she gets offended. I can spend the next hour explaining the joke and how it wasn't supposed to be offensive. Or I just apologize. Of course, I'm a coward.

> I've learnt that no matter if I'm right or wrong, I should just apologize. It's faster and less painful.

I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise. I would expect that insincere / dishonest communication would put a limit on intimacy, but maybe that's preferable to frequent arguments?

> I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise.

Not in the naive "always apologize" sense. That has the risk of creating a dynamic where the apology can't be trusted to be sincere and problems don't actually get addressed.

Sure, if you actually did something wrong, by all means apologize. But if it's somewhat of a gray matter, a healthier dynamic would be to establish a baseline, something that is only built over the long term, that whatever happened it wasn't either person's intention to create conflict or upset the other person. That might mean apologizing for triggering something.

With a bit of space, ideally both people could talk about what they were thinking or perceiving, understand why the other person behaved the way they did, and come up with ideas for how to prevent the same problem from happening next time.

Obviously that only works if both people are well-intended, able to deescalate conflicts, and willing to put in the work. No amount of this would fix fundamental differences or relationship red flags.

> I'm genuinely curious if this is a good strategy, relationship-wise.

Probably depends on the relationship.

I've found that during a conflict, I'm never 100% articulate or appropriate, so I will apologize for the mistakes I made during the discussion. If after the discussion, both of us agree that I was originally in the wrong, then of course, I'll apologize. But why apologize if you've done nothing wrong? That sets a really bizarre precedent: I'd rather placate someone who disagrees with me than to be able to express myself to a life partner. Why? If this is the person you're in a loving relationship with, why do they need so much protection from your viewpoints?

That said, I'm not immune to the equation:

    (die_on_this_hill_factor / (perceived_anger_of_partner * estimated_kwh_of_ongoing_conflict)) *
        (personal_energy * previous_perceived_slights_against_me * stress * recent_affirmations_about_topic)

If that value is below some threshold, drop it and move on, and depending on the outcome, sure, apologize. But apologizing every single time sounds like someone who wants to live their life wrapped around someone else's pinky.

Its the nature of struggle sessions. No matter what, unless you admit to doing harm, no matter if you did, no one will let you rest until you admit it.

I'd like to think the only winning move is to not play, but I dont think modern social media allows that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session

if you genuinely haven't done something wrong, chances are she's upset about something else you did.

> as soon as you start explaining yourself, you have lost the argument (I learned this when I tried to explain myself to my partner)

Yes. When it's about minor things, you don't care to be right when the relationship with your partner is at stake.

But the angry mobs fuelled by hypocrisy and bad journalism are not your partner. They are the problem. They need to be told loud and clear that they're not just dead wrong, they're also dangerous and bigoted.

Part 2: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

Part 3: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

Part 4: https://donaldgmcneiljr1954.medium.com/nytimes-peru-n-word-p...

Thanks! Do you by chance also have a link to the Daily Beast article that started this kerfuffle?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...

I believe this is the article in question.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/star-new-york-times-reporter-d...

In the interest of holding people accountable for what they publish, rather than giving them the option to falsify their words later, or claim that others have done so:

Part 1: https://archive.fo/PLa2m

Part 2: https://archive.fo/cbU53

Part 3: https://archive.fo/TT3B2

Part 4: https://archive.fo/W12D7

(As another comment points out below, these articles are also likely to get memory-holed by demands to censor "racist content", or "content by racists".)

I did try things like https://web.archive.org/web/20210301145319/https://donaldgmc... but the Medium JS seems to successfully replace the page with a 500 error after it's loaded, despite being served from the IA. All the requests in the debug pane do go to archive.org, so this is probably a solvable problem.

Are there other good alternatives to archive.fo for this kind of thing? Maybe something decentralized?

I wonder if there's something like archive.is/fo/vn/??, but built on IPFS.

It sounds like what's happening at the New York Times is that the younger generation of journalists (Gen X, Millenials) want the older generation out. They want their jobs.

In that context it's easy to see why no argument or defense would ever convince the "woke" mob in the newsroom.

Ding-ding-ding. Yes, that is exactly what's actually happening here—and it's happening at a number of large news media outlets, print or otherwise. There is no longer a mandatory retirement age, and the older reporters with more experience (who are also relatively healthy for their age) simply don't want to retire. The business is shrinking and so there are fewer jobs available to new people, at an increasingly laughable salary.

The older reporters not only (rightly) see the younger generation as a threat to their jobs, but also tend to despise their perceived arrogance, ideologically-driven worldview, and weak professional skills (namely, poor writing ability). This produces a lot of pent-up resentment and low-level friction which eventually explodes into strange court intrigues like this episode.

Beyond this, journalism has always involved viciously cutthroat and competitive rivalries between reporters. Those rivalries used to be settled via results, "gets," and access. Now they are now solved by wielding mob power via social media, which gives them leverage over their parent company's business.

well it has been claimed that they want to direct the news rather than tell it, as in they want to push what they think is right and that moral imperative is more important that presenting the facts.

this is what worries me the most about the changes seen in the press, many publications are already bowing to pressure and far too many jump on the vilification bandwagon as if to say "See we know how to act and we agree" without regard to context or much else.

cancel culture or whatever you want to call it is hyper destructive and will simply lead to a world where trust is never possible

if you wanted to destroy Western civilization you could not do much better than this. McCarthyism is back on the menu.

> well it has been claimed that they want to direct the news rather than tell it, as in they want to push what they think is right and that moral imperative is more important that presenting the facts.

This is what the corporate press has always done. There has never been a time where wealthy papers were paying journalists to follow the story and would print whatever they found. These are just nice stories people tell themselves.

What's mostly happening right now is a combination of a changing of the guard, with a new generation valuing other moral absolutes than the previous one; and more access to the internals of papers because of freer accesa to information (and misinformation) from social media.

Perhaps that is just the weapon of choice to achieve the OP's stated goals, particularly effective in a social media environment outside their jobs where outrage = attention = name recognition.

The older generation has been canceling pro-socialist speech and agendas for decades, is that okay?

How is this any different?

Its quite amazing that he's an experienced journalist and he knows its worth publishing your own work directly because you know journalists will subjectively misquote you. Its a good lesson.

So, after reading all this (and boy, I understand it's to provide context, but it is a slog), my general takeaway is that Donald was making good and accurate points, but perhaps for this audience probably should have considered and measured his words a bit more.

I do believe that if you actually understand the situations, there is most definitely no malice or harmful intent in anything he said/did, but I can also see how in the current climate where nuance is irrelevant that things he said and did could be perceived as offensive to people who are hypersensitive to these things.

What concerned me more was that, at least based upon this narrative, the collective failure of The Times to perhaps underline from the outset that the issue was spreading within the newsroom and how serious it was, and that the Times provided next to no support for the situation beyond having legal proofread statements and more or less left Donald to hang in the wind. It really seems to me that the Times more or less gave up on Donald from the outset and let things snowball as an excuse to get rid of him to avoid bad PR.

And the real kicker is that they still left him up to get a pulitzer for his reporting at their publication while throwing him under the bus. Talk about having your cake and eating it too.

He was negotiating on behalf of the union and the people he negotiated with were in charge of his punishment. This sends a strong message to other people negotiating on behalf of the union to not be such a pain.

> things he said and did could be perceived as offensive to people who are hypersensitive to these things.

Then they should have used this incident to educate them.

Sure, the word $N in question would be offensive to a black person. But why should a bunch of white teenagers be offended if he just used it the way he did? Sounds to me like a bunch of virtue-signallers trying to outdo each other

It's always hard to say when you only see one person's accounting of a story, but it sure looks like NYT was sick of him and looking for a reason to get rid of him.

Read an article on this last week. With the internet sucking up all the advertising revenue, journalism is turning into propaganda in order to try to retain patronage. It's eating them from the inside out.

https://thedispatch.com/p/words-as-weapons-how-activist-jour...

This has always been the case. Do you imagine news barons ever allowed journalists to publish stories that didn't suit their narrative?

I think a new thing is that so few control the news consumption of so many?

Isn't it the other way around? Weren't news much more concentrated before the option of writing blog posts or tweets existed?

Not necessarily, professional news organizations, including blogs and tweeters are increasingly owned by fewer and fewer parent companies. At least compared to say 70 years ago. If you go back farther it will be a different story.

Seems to me a combination of really poor quality[0], meandering writing by McNeil and obsession with the “cancel culture” narrative by many approaching the story is obscuring that real story here, talking McNeil at his word, is “management anti-labor negotiator leads effort to force out perennial labor negotiator who was a long time thorn in the side, and when the pretext on which that effort was founded fails to lead to the target handling the situation quite badly enough to justify firing, the details of the internal investigation (with additional embellishments designed to be provocative) conveniently leak to an outside media org, providing pretext for another round of action in which the target is finally forced out”.

If we accept McNeil’s narrative, and cut through the weeds of the meandering explanation, it seems very much to be a story of repeated attempts to find a way to leverage whatever material was available, including especially McNeil’s known prickly, defensive lack of tolerance for what he sees as BS, especially about himself, to maneuver him into a situation where he could be fired or forced to resign, not something genuinely driven by offense at him using a particular word, or disrespecting tribal shamans, or telling stories about his encounter with partially nude dancers, or any of the other incidents cited in complaints, together or separately.

[0] EDIT: arguably, some really poor quality writing on my part is obscuring my point here: in regard to McNeil’s epic, I meant “poor quality” only in terms in efficiency in conveying his side of the narrative of his being forced out for the benefit of readers looking to be informed about that, which superficially seems to be the putative intent of the piece.

This guy has been writing for the NYT for decades. Has tons of prestigious accolades for his writing, was up for a Pulitzer this year and you claim his writing is "poor quality" based on....what exactly?

> you claim his writing is "poor quality" based on....what exactly?

Because it is meandering, lacks a clear focus and organization, falls down tangents, etc.

People who are excellent writers within a professional system where (1) they aren't writing about themselves, and (2) have the support of professional editors, etc., before the public sees the work, often have much lower quality without #2 or when the context is far from #1, such as writing about personal incidents that are highly charged. And most especially when both of those occur at the same time.

And I don't claim his writing in the general sense is poor quality, I say that the four-part epic on this incident is poorly written.

Or maybe it intends more to graphically convey the flow of consciousness that results from extreme indignation more than to inform effectively about the author's side of events, in which case it's a masterpiece of written art. “Poorly written” definitely makes an assumption of purpose that may not be warranted: as a show-not-tell feelings piece it is tremendously effective.

I totally disagree!

I thought it was a well-written account of his experience.

I think it comes across as poor quality writing to people who don't know or care about the insider media/NYT stuff. For those people, there are too many characters in the story, and the meat comes at the end.

But for media insiders, they know who these people are and find the additional detail useful/entertaining. I am in the former camp and wish there had been a timeline or TLDR.

Generally writing should be judged based on what the author was trying to accomplish, as in this case, does it make a compelling case to its intended audience?

And the intended audience is clearly people who care quite a lot about the "inside baseball" of NYT/Journalism and the media more broadly.

So how the general reader perceives this is irrelevant. It wasn't written for the general reader!

I don't read articles in the New England Journal of Medicine and claim the writing is poor because...it's not written for me and I wouldn't even know where to start in critiquing it.

No, this isn't primarily a labor dispute. And you're not "cutting through the weeds," you're missing the whole point. Baquet told the truth: the newsroom turned against McNeil, they wouldn't work with him, and that's why he had to go. The hostile attorney surely didn't help, maybe she set the ball rolling, but once the twitter mafia was out for blood the game was over.

Also, the irony of you talking about "meandering writing" is just breathtaking. Ever heard of a period?

It's possible the newsroom turned against him at least in part due to the fact he was not allowed to make his side of the story known. I'm not sure how much difference it would have made though, based on the fact so many people think context and intent are somewhere between not good enough excuses and totally irrelevant.

> Also, the irony of you talking about "meandering writing" is just breathtaking. Ever heard of a period?

Petty. No one in a HN comment is claiming to be a journalist.

I also got the impression that the labor negotiator aspect was under specified.

I don't think it was poor writing, though. Rather, I think it is a side effect of this mainly being reported evidence. This is less a story and more a presentation of evidence?

> “Recently,” I told Carolyn, “I’ve been feeling a little like a Confederate Statue. I think people are getting a little sick of me and are waiting for me to make a mistake so they can pull me down and trample me.”

I can't be the only person who thinks that this is an odd and inappropriate comparison to make, can I? But it doesn't surprise me that someone who thinks that this is a reasonable analogy in a public setting would be interpreted as making racist remarks.

I had a similar internal response when I read that sentence. I could easily interpret it as claiming that people are pulling down Confederate statues because they are a little sick of them rather than because of what the statues represent.

Try to grasp that 'what they represent' is maybe not what you think they do.

The Washington Monument was built by slaves, in the name of a man who owned slaves, in a nation full of slaves. Does it represent slavery? Or that era?

Even though the Civil war was to a great extent fought over slavery - it was fundamentally states vs. states. If it were really about slavery, it very well have been 'sub groups' vs. 'sub groups' all over the US. There were economic jealousies as well.

The statues are symbols of the ancestors of those who were living there, heroes to one side - and that's mostly it.

They are arguably problematically offensive to some, but it's unlikely they are 'symbols of racism' in the sense that this is what White Southerners are inspired by.

If rednecks were driving by, aspiring for the days when they 'put those blacks back in their place' - I would say raze them all to the ground. But that's not remotely it.

What Southerners see in those monuments is just more or less what regular Americans seen in the Washington monument. That's it. Pride, while glossing over the uglier stuff.

I agree that the vast majority of people who display the confederate flag or want to protect confederate monuments are not specifically inspired by overt racism or support for slavery. I know this because I grew up in the South and many of my friends and family members held warm feelings for the confederacy. These people were not monsters and they certainly did not believe themselves to be racists, though many of them held a number of racists beliefs individually.

That said, I think there is a clear and obvious difference between the Washington monument, which was built by slaves during a time of slavery, and the Confederate flag - a symbol of a movement which was fundamentally about slavery. Confederates betrayed and killed hundreds of thousands of their countrymen for the purpose of protecting slavery.

Do you believe that the US Civil War wasn't really about slavery? I encourage you to read the declarations of succession from states like South Carolina (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp). The idea that the Civil War was not really about slavery, but about "states rights" is revisionist history designed to make the Confederacy seem more sympathetic. The US Civil War was 100.0% about the right to keep slaves and the Confederate States' willingness to murder their countrymen to do so.

> I can't be the only person who thinks that this is an odd and inappropriate comparison to make, can I?

You're probably right. But I think there are also many who take a view opposite of yours. Maybe that's why these debates rage for multiple years, instead of being quickly resolved.

My father is like this. He believes very strongly that he should be allowed to say anything and other people should be able to take it.

I don't really agree, personally, but I empathize with the central crux of the argument (freedom of speech, or something like that). Nobody likes to be told what (or what not) to do. But I think life would be easier if we all spent some time thinking about how our audience would perceive our words before we say them out loud.

i'm surprised and grateful that it wasn't

NYT: "We do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent."

Also NYT: As President Barack Obama said of racism in 2015: “We are not cured of it. And it’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say ‘[n-word]’ in public.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/17/opinion/sunday/n-word-tap...

(They print the actual word)

For the record, they walked that statement back. It was an absurd statement in the first place, but they did walk it back.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/new-york-times-editor-walks...

Thanks! Didn't know that.

If you're a journalist, you should know better than anyone that:

  There is no such thing as off-the-record
  and
  It is wise to consider everything one says and writes to be saved for eternity and immediately sent to one's worst enemy

It's interesting that we humans just can't stop talking.

How is this relevant?

I know I should be paying attention to the meat of the matter, but I was stuck on the fact that this man's life story was literally "I started in the mail room in the '70s" and I'm flabbergasted that there are people in the modern world who got jobs at the most prestigious newspaper in the world that way.

It's like hearing "oh yeah I used to take the trolley to work for a nickel and we'd go see a talky after work" from a modern working-age human.

> I know I should be paying attention to the meat of the matter

Yes, maybe you should :P

I think the author didn't misinterpret the situation. Just everyone else did. In my opinion the "emergency mode" of the NYT made everything worse.

Why would the hold an emergency meeting if it wasn't an emergency.

If they had just held their horses, the actually empty article of the "beast" would have fizzled.

Note: I am not a media insider

---

I don't like the authors response in this post. In part 1 he is basically groveling. He needs to provide the facts, and then shut up, instead of telling everyone how he "was active in africa", so he clearly can't be racist

The biggest take for me is that reporters are ideologues of what they see as ‘truth’; to wit:

“...But we’re still jackals. We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job. At the highest levels, like Watergate, it’s about digging for the truth, no matter what corrupt government official it hurts. At the basest level, when even the crummiest scandal erupts, you have to repeat the accusation, even if you know it’s untrue or half-true, in order to explain the truth — no matter how much you may personally like the source you’re hurting.”

How can you know if you’re ultimately right or wrong? What are you inflecting?

> We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Referring mostly to part 3: if you're aging in a modern company and do not fully endorse the "company spirit", you will be targeted by younger bullshiters. They will perceive you as a threat to the company and use your demise as a way up. In this case it is likely the DB has been tipped by an insider.

Newspapers are modern companies like many others: they are under ferocious competition, live from ads and subsidies from would-be oligarchs. Not a place for a "grumpy" old man, no matter the value you bring to the company, if you are not part of the "team".

> Yes, I did use the word, in this context: A student asked me if I thought her high school’s administration was right to suspend a classmate of hers for using the word in a video she’d made in eighth grade. I said “Did she actually call someone a “(offending word”? Or was she singing a rap song or quoting a book title or something?”

So he was asking a student if they had said the "evil word"... He wasn't calling anyone that, he was basically repeating it to ask the question. And they fired him for that?

Honestly, I'm a massive proponent of social progression. But this seems like 'cancel culture' obsession going way too far.

I would have expected that professional journalism is a den of vipers, but this is just a complete infestation of evil. Change the names and issues and you could just as easily be talking about the GOP at this level of bull-headed corruption and ignorance.

I've seen "cancel culture" in analogy to the immune response for a long time now, and it fits pretty well.

If you imagine that ideas can spread like infections, it makes sense to quarantine and ostracize individuals that have caught threathening ideas.. There's also the thing where someone socializing with an 'infected' individual gets treated as if they were infected as well. Better safe than sorry.

With a high false positive rate, you err on the side of safety. Smoke detectors have a high false positive rate by design. You'd rather it go off on accident every now and then than fail when there's actually smoke. Present-day "McCarthyism" seems like a good example of this process in action.

To people who dismiss the idea of cancel culture, I say this: check out South-Korea. Celebrities are regularly driven to suicide by online mobs. It's an epidemic. If a slight moral flaw is perceived, they're fair game. And the mobs can be brutal.

This ‘revitalized’ NYT should be viewed as a brand new organization (starting with zero respect).

Only then will you not be disappointed.

> We can befriend you for years, and then bite off your arm just as you’re offering us a treat. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the job.

Something about this line irks me. I have a love-hate relationship with journalism because of this. I like that we are able to share stories through good communication and writing but on the other hand, being honest could (as the author said) "bite" you back. I just wish that we were honest about the interaction from the get go and not waiting for that a-ha moment to catch the person off-guard so they can support their own initiative, bias or story.

It seems to me one of the prominent issues in the "racist" dialogue is the nuance between people who are outwardly hateful and people who are outwardly indifferent to racial injustice. This guy probably doesn't hate anyone, but it certainly doesn't come across to me like he cares.

This part is a red flag:

> So, yeah, I can be an asshole. If you’re an editor, and you made changes in a story of mine, and I lashed out at you like that, I’m very sorry. It wasn’t because of your race or sex or youth or anything else. You may have just been a set of initials in the margins of our editing software. That’s one part of me that’s not very nice, and I know it. If I did that to you, I apologize. And if you’ll tell me about it, I’ll apologize personally.

This seems like a red flag:

> I’m surprised by how quick some colleagues who barely know me were prepared to accept those accusations and even add more on a Times alumni Facebook page. Someone to whom I don’t think I’ve spoken since 1994 said “calling him only a racist is being nice.” An editor I happily worked side by side with in 1989 and have had brief but cordial chats with maybe once every ten years when we bump into each other on the street said I seemed “dismissive of people of color and their views” back then. Someone I thought I’d been very nice to when she left the paper attacked me for using the expression “third world” in a story that was, as always, approved by several Times editors.

This sounds like a red flag:

> My girlfriend thinks I have a high-functioning Asperger aspect to my personality — I’m empathic about suffering but I also very much misread audiences. A young Haitian-American colleague and friend who sat behind me for three years in Science news called me after the Beast story. I told him what I’d actually said in Peru. He said, “Donald, you sound exactly like my father. He would also say ‘You can’t dress like a thug to a job interview and expect to get the job.’ But from you, it sounds racist.” I said “How is ‘thug’ racist? What about Thug Life Records?” He said “It’s almost the equivalent of the n-word. Don’t you know about Marshawn Lynch?’’ I said: “He plays for Seattle?” I could hear him sigh. “No, Donald, let me explain…”

You can basically feel this guy's personality as a cliche. He thinks he's pretty smart. He constructs logical reasons to justify his action and doesn't understand intuitively when others have strong adverse reactions to his reasoning.

In part 2 he provides this passage:

> The question about blackface was part of a discussion of cultural appropriation. The students felt that it was never, ever appropriate for any white person to adopt anything from another culture — not clothes, not music, not anything. I counter-argued that all cultures grow by adopting from others. I gave examples — gunpowder and paper. I said I was a San Franciscan, and we invented blue jeans. Did that mean they — East Coast private school students — couldn’t wear blue jeans? I said we were in Peru, and the tomato came from Peru. Did that mean that Italians had to stop using tomatoes? That they had to stop eating pizza? Then one of the students said: “Does that mean that blackface is OK?” I said “No, not normally — but is it OK for black people to wear blackface?” “The student, sounding outraged, said “Black people don’t wear blackface!” I said “In South Africa, they absolutely do. The so-called colored people in Cape Town have a festival every year called the Coon Carnival* where they wear blackface, play Dixieland music and wear striped jackets. It started when a minstrel show came to South Africa in the early 1900’s. Americans who visit South Africa tell them they’re offended they shouldn’t do it, and they answer ‘Buzz off. This is our culture now. Don’t come here from America and tell us what to do.’ So what do you say to them? Is it up to you, a white American, to tell black South Africans what is and isn’t their culture?”

Another instance of him asserting pedantic reasoning against a hard emotional opinion. Material he knows well is making people uncomfortable, but believes he is not at all accountable for.

I don't think he is a racist. I think he is highly likely to be perceived as an asshole by those around him. I think its highly likely that he aggravates sensitive issues, including racial issues, somewhat frequently. I probably wouldn't want to work with him.

Your argument reads to me as saying that the people on the other side if this discussion (the ones who brought up the subject of appropriation, etc) have a right not to be challenged in their views. They are entitled to be offended by anyone who does not simply agree with them.

What is the point of going on a trip like this with a NYT reporter if not to be exposed to new ideas and new viewpoints?

I'm all for holding people accountable when they say terrible things with the intent to harm others, or say terrible things due to indifference and refuse to apologize when confronted. But you should not damn someone for having a different honest opinion.

Framing things as one's right feels like a naively libertarian slant to what is not an issue of governance, but of getting along with others. I wholesomely support this guy's right to express the view that black face is not objectively inappropriate regardless of all contexts. And yet I would be utterly unsurprised if many students came out of that conversation feeling like he had used obscure examples to argue that black face isn't universally bad and we should therefore just deal with it in the US. I wouldn't bat an eye to learn that he frequently undermined racial issues with technicalities. There are people saying he denied the concept of white privilege. He says he didn't do this. I doubt he thinks he did, but I'm betting a lot of people disagree.

Hanging around someone who frequently espouse technically defensible views that visibly make those around him uncomfortable is unpleasant. It is not difficult at all to imagine how a series of unpleasant encounters results in negative consequences. Especially if it trends into being seen as intentionally doing it to make others uncomfortable, which a lot of times it actually is when you're dealing with someone who revels in controversial pedantic details.

I don't see this as someone being held accountable for harming someone directly. I see this as a guy who caused people to repeatedly feel uncomfortable on trendy issues and an org get really nervous that he's a reputational liability.

There is a difference between indifference and dispassion. Because of the author's long career and varied experiences, he is able to see that most issues are not black and white. The problem is that high school kids are not academically dispassionate; they are not equipped to see deviations from their orthodoxy as anything but sinful.

People should be able to live and work with people who are academically dispassionate; no one is perfect and there are worse sins in the world. Indeed, I believe in the benefits of diversity: communities need people who can face emotionally charged issues head-on and come up with new ideas even if unpopular.

That the NYT employed the author for decades as a reporter helps me understand why its newsroom has been so well-regarded. He should just start a new newspaper. I'd subscribe.

> Another instance of him asserting pedantic reasoning against a hard emotional opinion.

This is the crux of the issue! It's not about racism at all. It's about there being no nuance or context, to the point where someone gets offended and that offense is lauded as the highest level of experience: offense beats reason and logic. It doesn't matter if you are right, because you offended somebody.

> Material he knows well is making people uncomfortable, but believes he is not at all accountable for.

Yes, because he was hired to teach teenagers things. Not to make them comfortable. And teaching is about expanding minds, not just regurgiating facts. Expansion is uncomfortable. We find comfort in the familiar. A great teacher will seldom make people feel comfortable.

None of your "red flags" seem that red flag to me. Does he seem hard headed to me? Yes. But I believe in this case, he has a very good reason to be.

How much more power are we going to give offended teenagers?

I've stated several places, I don't think he's racist, so yeah I agree. You ask how much power are we giving teenagers, yet he mentions how multiple coworkers felt similarly about him. That is how he comes off. If you're socially unpleasant, you suffer social consequences. That is how it works. Trying to reduce it to a single instance like this n-word is the mistake. This guy appears to have built a reputation over many incidents, and then utterly blundered in handling this particular one.

He does sound a bit like an asshole, and like he has a chip on his shoulder. It does sound like he lacking in sensitivity to others experience him. If he was my personal friend, and he came to me about this, I'd suggest he work on that.

I don't think any of this is fireable. Personally I have found that being more tolerant of people with... shall we say, strong personalities, has been worthwhile. And I bet he's not the only asshole at the times, and I bet in certain ways, they are better for it.

Wait, there's nothing "pedantic" about what he was saying. He was raising a very real point about white American liberals enforcing their own cultural imperialism on Black South-Africans from a very different culture - something which can arguably be described as racist. His offense and discomfort would be no less real than whatever discomfort was being felt by people around him.

Ironically it's this comment that raises Red Flags.

There's really nothing whatsoever in his articulation that is flag worthy.

He's clearly a little bit curmudgeon, and probably disagreeable and there's nothing wrong with that.

Repeatedly saying things that makes people uncomfortable has consequences. There's liberal and conservative versions of it. Not comprehending the social consequences of your words is a problem. You personally finding one specific individual not problematic is completely irrelevant to understand how he got himself in that situation.

This is, frankly, paranoid delusional madness. These are not “red flags”. How do you expect to function in this world when you are that afraid of someone communicating basic information in a completely non-threatening way? Have you considered that maybe it’s you who has some things to work on, rather than the other person?

Sorry I didn't really specify. By red flags, I mean, an indicator that he comes off to other people as a huge asshole but doesn't realize it. It seems like he is likely to regularly make people uncomfortable and then not notice, or out of self-righteousness, intentionally ignore, obvious social cues that a normal person would respond to.

He says his girlfriend suggested he was a high functioning Aspie. It sounds like she's right. I think I'm a high functioning Aspie. Learning not to do exactly this kind of shit was something I needed to do manually. I don't feel he's done that.

This is an example of why I’ve changed from someone who openly discussed issues with people to a person who will only discuss “sports and weather” with my real name attached, such as at work, and then funnel the rest into a set of increasingly toxic Reddit alts.

The lesson here is that there’s no meaningful conversations to be had between 60 year olds and teenagers. So just avoid them.

I know I seem like an old person, but there’s situations where I’ve had to talk to teenagers and the experience is surreal how different our realities are. And it’s definitely worse when the teenagers are rich. It’s all one can do to not freak out and start screaming like Annie Wilkes from Misery or Holden Caufield from Catcher in the Rye.

I was sitting in a classroom and the sentence I remember was “My dad says a [Mercedes] E Class is just the poor man’s S Class, I would never drive one even if you gave it to me.”

The mistake this person made was going on the trip. Trying to be “open minded” with teenage rich girls who chose to go on a Peruvian shaman vacation shows poor judgement.

Author says he was trying to do his friend a favor, but a $300/day upside compared with just the mental pain of eating meals with teenagers for days is just not worth it.

This seems like NYT just using an excuse to fire him and the ideological madness is just cover.

> The lesson here is that there’s no meaningful conversations to be had between 60 year olds and teenagers.

> the mental pain of eating meals with teenagers for days

I really think this incorrectly stereotypes an entire generation as this set of unreasonable and irrational fools. While the teenagers on the trip misjudged the author's intentions, it is the Times that are at fault for using those complaints as grounds for discipline.

I think it definitely stereotypes, but it’s a defense mechanism. I think it’s possible, but too risky to attempt.

It’s a situation where the Times is clearly in the wrong, but this guy is out of a job. Because of the thoroughness of these posts and the references to lawyers, the best case is this guy gets millions after a few years of litigation.

But that’s why the reasonable action is to just avoid the risk. That’s easier than trying to fix teenagers, large orgs, etc

Is this mindset similar to the "Pence rule" of "never dine alone with a woman"? It seems like this could carry over to topics about race or politics. Basically, avoid potentially problematic situations that can be misinterpreted, regardless of your actual intent or beliefs?

Probably something similar. What’s sad is that it’s a defeatist tactic that misses out on lots of great things.

I would be pretty angry if my boss wouldn’t have dinner or private conversations with me just because of my sex.

Even as a progressive who read the NYT religiously growing up in NYC, I stopped reading it in the past five years or so. It’s gotten so bad that I don’t think they can recover. The same goes for other highly regarded names in the newspaper business such as the Financial Times, WSJ, etc.

I think it’s simply a reflection of the dying industry. I get my news from Twitter directly from reporters that I respect.

Tangent but why is medium.com so bad? CPU usage is instantly 100% for the first 20 seconds after loading. Disabling JS has no visible effect but makes it load instantly.

Granted, I'm on an older laptop (AMD A6-7310 APU) but holy cow I thought I could at least browse the web on this thing for a few more years.

Medium is awful. Pages on average load in <0.5 seconds, including JS. Medium takes 12 seconds on average. Bandwidth is not the bottleneck, I have 1Gps service.

TL;DR?

You can't say racist words. Not even to ask "did she really say <bad word>?" because then you said it yourself and hence you are a racist. It's woke America.

According to the person who got fired. That's not how the other people there describe it.

The TLDR is 'don't argue with woke, entitled, powerful/rich teens'. Especially don't do it by being nuanced in your usage of racial slurs - it will go over their heads and it's likely to bite you in the ass.

"We make America what it is — without a free press, democracy dies."

The second part is certainly true. But are you sure about the first part? If you ask anybody who make America what it is, the answer "journalists" maybe won't pass 10%.

I know this will get downvoted, but in the current state of affairs, I would rather have no press or journalists at all than this woke sanctimonious ministry of truth.

> The second part is certainly true. But are you sure about the first part? If you ask anybody who make America what it is, the answer "journalists" maybe won't pass 10%.

Without a free press, you're left with PR (or propaganda, to use its original name). You can't have much of a democracy if that's how the citizenry are "informed." This is shown by how one of the first things budding authoritarians do in backsliding democracy is attack the free press and gain control over it (e.g. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/07/24/hungary-editors-sacking-...).

There's a high likelihood that someone will respond to my comment with a false equivalency claiming journalism is propaganda.

The question is "Who make America what it is?", it is not "Who make democracy what it is".

America's uniqueness is not democracy. There are many other countries are democratic and have free press and have journalists.

People might not say it, but it is absolutely true. The biggest thing that separates a good democracy from a bad one is a free press that holds government accountable by providing transparency into its operations.

"Who make America what it is?" != "Who make democracy what it is".

America's uniqueness is not democracy. There are many other countries are democratic and have free press and have journalists.

It's regrettable, but the author seems to forget that he was part of an organization that has been spreading rhetoric which leads directly to this for years, now when he himself is bitten by this too, it's surprised pikachu face.

Pardon the ignorance but isn’t there a significant difference in how you pronounce this word? There is one way to say it that is the taboo version (phonetic spelling sort of) and another - with -a in the end which is how it’s used in songs etc.?

I have never heard the first pronunciation used in the US, but the second, accepted version is used everywhere, mostly by black people, but by white people too.

Even though white people using the accepted version may raise some eyebrows, it’s nothing compared to what I imagine would happen if the first, phonetic pronunciation was used.

Asking this because it seems many people here refer to rap / movies / street use of the word, where in 100% of the cases (besides maybe some historic prose) the word has been used in its modified, accepted form.

As for the first, historic/ phonetic pronunciation, it seems unreasonable to use it in any context, besides maybe speaking of some historical usage in prose etc., unless, of course, one actually intends to be offensive.

This guy seems to really have a knack for writing with himself as the focus. Maybe he'll find better fortunes outside of journalism.

These are article about how something he said was taken out of context. He is talking about "himself" because that's the topic!

This is not an article in the Times. This is a post in his blog explaining how he lost his job!

Why would you say that?

Because its an easy way to bring down the content of the article, instead of addressing the points it makes.

> Obviously, I badly misjudged my audience in Peru that year. I thought I was generally arguing in favor of open-mindedness and tolerance — but it clearly didn’t come across that way. And my bristliness makes me an imperfect pedagogue for sensitive teenagers. Although the students liked me in 2018, some of those in 2019 clearly detested me.

So in the end, he still blamed those teenagers. Has he learned nothing?

> So in the end, he still blamed those teenagers. Has he learned nothing?

What should he have learned?

If I were one of those teenagers, I would have felt offended just by these remarks alone.

It looks like a fact that at least some of the teenagers in that group complained, and NYT handled their complaints professionally then. However, when some other media exposed it, the author treated it lightly and inappropriately.

Down vote me as you like, but I don't like the author blame it on the teenagers at all.

How to behave.

He also compares himself to a confederate statue.

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