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Michael Mason’s 50-year teaching career ended on a sour note. Last fall, his history classes at Queen’s University were abruptly cancelled after he was accused of making racist and sexist comments in the classroom. He had used the terms “rag head,” “towel head,” “japs” and “little yellow sons of bitches.” A student complained that his “borderline racist comments” made her “very uncomfortable.” On top of that, one of his female teaching assistants complained because he’d told them they should become “mistresses.”(Source: Margaret Wente:)
Dirty old creep? Not so fast. The subject of the course was imperialism and neo-colonialism at the time of the Second World War. Prof. Mason was using the offensive phrases to illustrate the attitudes of that era. They were direct quotes from contemporaneous documents – a context that was abundantly clear to nearly all of the 140 students who had flocked to his popular course.
If feminists can humorously call women sluts, why can't a professor use the same typeof language to make a point?
Many kids grow up so sheltered from all isms (which is not always a bad thing) that when they hear it raw, they're shocked, and having been fed political correctness all their lives, they think the first thing to do is censor it.
They don't stop and think: does this man really think Muslims are towel-heads?
Alas, if you use such a word, even in jest, you're as good as guilty as meaning it, in this humorless world.
H/T: Blazing Catfur
