PC Principal VI: What The Fuck Am I Reading Part Deux

[Karbuncle]

This ain't an issue of politics or equality this is a bunch of kids who can't handle life to such an extreme degree that foreign languages emotionally cripple them because their words might sound like an English "no no" word. This ain't my words either, its them in their letter that describe in detail the mental distress hearing it did to them.

I broke half my post and lost a lot of words, so yah, I won't drama queen monologue about this but damn, shits wack yo.

Notice how only white people and Chinese people are defending this guy. Says a lot.

Good riddance.

Reading just the first 4 paragraphs of that article should be enough to convince a reasonable person this is absurd.

[Tymon]

American, white dude, in an American university, deliberately pronouncing the word in a way that is phonetically similar to the N word.

Again, good riddance. Not hard to understand. It's really very simple to not be an offensive POS. Yet shit like this continues to prove how much y'all want to keep the tradition alive.

[NynJa]

Imagine these kids going to any spanish locale and hearing what the color "black" is.

[Tymon]

Not the same word, try again.

[Krandor]

Did you even watch the video of the zoom call?

This has been a thing for a long time, it just took awhile for cancel culture to catch up to it. I first heard like 2 decades ago from a friend who was learning Mandarin (who amusingly enough was black)

[Tymon]

Yeah I did and my opinion isn't any different.

Disclaimers are a thing. Trigger warnings are too. They're cool, people should learn to use them. Especially white people in positions of power.

[Karbuncle]

At first I just assumed you skimmed the headline and didn't read the article, damn, okay then.

Edit: Eh nevermind. Sorry to bother.

[Ksandra]

The Chinese word doesn’t even sound exactly like the n-word, though they are very close. Dude actually was pretty accurate (To my ears at least) with the Mandarin pronunciation. When I first heard it back in the day it sounded the same, but Mandarin is a tone-focused language, and after a bit you can hear the difference easily.


Thinking he was doing it to say the n-word is full on stupid.

[Tymon]

The point is what he's saying has the potential to cause harm to people. We should be at a point, especially in academia, where that kind of thing is avoidable. It is avoidable. So when things like this happen, it deservedly gets attention and retribution.

The intent is irrelevant.

[Ksandra]

Should be noted that out of the 44,000 USC students, 6626 are Chinese international students. And there’s going to be more Chinese-American students added to that list making the school’s Chinese population to be more than 15%, which isn’t a small percentage by any means.

Don’t bother going to that school if your so afraid of hearing Mandarin, because eventually you are going to be hearing Mandarin.

[Ksandra]

The point is what he's saying has the potential to cause harm to people. We should be at a point, especially in academia, where that kind of thing is avoidable. It is avoidable. So when things like this happen, it deservedly gets attention and retribution.

The intent is irrelevant.

So you’re saying Chinese people need to give a trigger warning anytime they speak their native tongue in the US?

[Gredival]

Yeah I did and my opinion isn't any different.

Disclaimers are a thing. Trigger warnings are too. They're cool, people should learn to use them. Especially white people in positions of power.

Trigger warnings are objectively bad.

https://osf.io/qajzy/ - no main effect of TW and found increased anxiety for students who had PTSD


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30077703 - TWs increased anxiety in people who think words can be harmful.


https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-35703-001 - TWs had little to no impact on affect or learning and this did not vary by personal history with the topic.

[Tymon]

So you’re saying Chinese people need to give a trigger warning anytime they speak their native tongue in the US?

If they're using that word then maybe yeah? As replies to the (numerous) twitter threads have confirmed, there are alternatives in mandarin to use. Maybe use one of them instead of the word that might cause harm to POC?

Again - people don't necessarily have to be rotten racists here. It's just rather simple to avoid being in a situation where you might be mislabeled as one. So, for the people who fuck up badly enough to be in said situation... tough luck.

[Ksandra]

Should be noted that out of the 44,000 USC students, 6626 are Chinese international students. And there’s going to be more Chinese-American students added to that list making the school’s Chinese population to be more than 15%, which isn’t a small percentage by any means.

Don’t bother going to that school if your so afraid of hearing Mandarin, because eventually you are going to be hearing Mandarin.

Tbh I’d rather a Professor explain it, than some poor international student get punched in the throat because the frat boy didn’t know any better.

[Tymon]

Trigger warnings are objectively bad.

https://osf.io/qajzy/ - no main effect of TW and found increased anxiety for students who had PTSD


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30077703 - TWs increased anxiety in people who think words can be harmful.


https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-35703-001 - TWs had little to no impact on affect or learning and this did not vary by personal history with the topic.

Feels more like academia has an indictment to change as to not need to have TWs rather than accusing vulnerable students of being too sensitive.

[Ksandra]

If they're using that word then maybe yeah? As replies to the (numerous) twitter threads have confirmed, there are alternatives in mandarin to use. Maybe use one of them instead of the word that might cause harm to POC?

Again - people don't necessarily have to be rotten racists here. It's just rather simple to avoid being in a situation where you might be mislabeled as one. So, for the people who fuck up badly enough to be in said situation... tough luck.

This is the dumbest ever. It’s a learning experience. You learn a little bit about another language so you don’t get upset when you come across people using that language. Rather than letting people speak their own tongue you physically want to change it because you can’t handle it. Do you realize how utterly ridiculous that sounds?


And again, it isn’t even the same word. It just sounds close.

As someone mentioned, where’s the outrage for the Spanish word “black”? The n-word literally originated from that word.

[Tymon]

Lol at marginalized communities being required to face triggering language as a rite of passage in academia.

I'm done here. Enjoy I guess.

[Gredival]

Feels more like academia has an indictment to change as to not need to have TWs rather than accusing vulnerable students of being too sensitive.

1. But the point was that this incident was unintentional. So there was no harmful TW, just a student that was too sensitive getting triggered by something innocuous that was similar to a trigger.

2. The studies show that exposure, rather than avoidance, is better.

[Gredival]

Lol at marginalized communities being required to face triggering language as a rite of passage in academia.

I'm done here. Enjoy I guess.

What a silly argument. The whole point is that the word itself wasn't a trigger -- it sounded similar to a potential trigger.

And I doubt that the word itself was a trigger -- you can't tell me none of those students don't hear that word in other contexts (such as rap by black artists) without being triggered. It's that the students were offended what they thought they heard and by who they misheard.

So again it goes back to people having to be responsible for other people getting offended over innocuous behavior

[Koul]

Lol at marginalized communities being required to face triggering language as a rite of passage in academia.

I'm done here. Enjoy I guess.

At the cost of marginalizing other marginalized people? Or lemme guess, you're just chalking up Chinese people as being white adjacent therefore it's fine that their entire language get associated with an English slur and therefore should undergo warnings for, again, English speakers. That kind of comes off a little... y'know... Imperialismy