Brickbat: This Again?

'To Kill a Mockingbird'

The Peel, Ontario, school board has urged teachers not to use To Kill a Mockingbird in their classrooms. A directive sent to teachers notes the n-word appears 19 times in the book. And in a sign that board members possibly haven't actually read the book and certainly didn't understand it if they did, the memo notes that the book's "racist themes make it violent and oppressive for black students."

Comments

[Eddy]

So I guess Joseph Conrad is out of the question.

[DiegoF]

Sir, please! This is Reason.

[BLPoG]

The Horror! The Horror!

[Fist of Etiquette]

And who even knows what a chifferobe is an epithet for.

[Longtobefree]

All genteel southern ladies know what a chifferobe is, and that it is not an epithet.

[Jimothy]

Atticus Finch was a rape apologist. #believeallsurvivors

[Tom Bombadil]

And Boo Radley has to register.

[An Innocent Man]

In the modern version, Democrats are beating up Scout with a baseball bat and setting the Finch's house on fire.

#Believeallwomen

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Is that before or after a mob of Republicans lynches every black or brown person in sight, then shoots a 97-year-old women in a synagogue to bless the great white race?

Carry on, bigoted clingers.

[Remember to keep it all polit]

Same time as a Democrat is shooting up a Republican baseball game.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Fuck you.

[Radioactive]

so said the delusional asswipe.

[Jerryskids]

And in a sign that board members possibly haven't actually read the book and certainly didn't understand it if they did, the memo notes that the book's "racist themes make it violent and oppressive for black students."

I wouldn't assume that - it may be more that bringing up badthink history is triggering to the delicate snowflakes and therefore must be memory-holed. Which is sort of odd - how can you be a perpetually aggrieved victim if we're going to pretend the victimization never occurred? But it's like air-brushing cigarettes from old pictures or digitizing guns from not-so-old movies or designing an FDR memorial that carefully never shows a wheelchair. Let's pretend none of this happened lest somebody be offended by factual history! (Meanwhile, we'll pretend the Persians in the Middle Ages invented just about everything known to science that hadn't already been invented by the ancient Egyptians and the evil European white people stole all that knowledge and claimed it as their own.)

[JFree]

This is a CANADIAN school board. Jim Crow didn't happen there. Black men weren't lynched there in the thousands based on false accusations. There is no reason to assume that Canadian kids are taught American history - and there is a lot of American fiction that doesn't have the same messaging outside the context known to an American reader.

[JFree]

Just looking at one of the 'alternative' authors on racism that the school board talks about - Lawrence Hill wrote Book of Negroes as a fictional work that would need the context of the historical Book of Negroes that probably is part of Canadian history courses.

That book had to change its title to Someone Knows My Name for the US market - TODAY - precisely because the word Negro has a different meaning than it did two generations ago - or 250 years ago when the fiction is set

[DiegoF]

I thought Negro meant black person. Not used as much, though.

Fun fact: Thousands of older people still use that term to describe themselves in census department surveys, which is why it remained as a legacy on the census form. The census is supposed to not have a political agenda, is supposed to be descriptive of society not prescriptive. So, whether or not we think they should get with the times and describe themselves as we think proper, the fact that they do means that, if the mandate is to produce a comprehensive and accurate count of the number of blacks, and account of how people identify themselves, we must continue to keep that term in until it proves truly obsolete here in the world of reality.

The woke crowd, of course, has never been particularly interested in accurate science, nor in the facts of actual history and how it actually transpired. What they love is virtue-signalling demonstrations of outrage, and historical damnatio memoriae. And so, under the administration of our breathtakingly amoral ex-president, off the term went for 2020.

I'd be a lot more outraged about this myself, but it doesn't affect me. Not only because I am not a Negro, but because the last question I will be answering on my Census Form is

1. How many people were living or staying in this house, apartment, or mobile home on April 1, 2020?

[JFree]

I thought Negro meant black person.

Yes. It means black person - as white Europeans created the 'proper' categories of race/ethnicity by which people are supposed to describe themselves and self-identify. So it is a perfectly normal self-identification - for someone of a very different generation who accepted that reality then that whites will have the power to create the words that are used to describe you - and will remain so for as long as that generation still lives.

The very reasons why people no longer self-identify as 'Negro' are - like it or not - ACTUAL history too. Maybe you are unfamiliar with Malcolm X or the anti-colonial folks of the 1960's.

[DiegoF]

You said it had a different meaning. It does not. I was being probably petty and nitpicky, which was rude and I apologize. It's clear that you meant blacks nowadays don't like it because it evokes memories of a less enlightened era. I did not mean to suggest that blacks today should continue to refer to themselves as Negroes, and that it is silly for them to prefer a term with less baggage.

It being established that that was not my point at all, nothing I actually said in my previous comment is undermined; it is still PC bullshit to remove "Negro" from the census form. Also, your characterization of older people who used, or even continue to use, the term as being particularly "accept[ing of] that reality then that whites will have the power to create the words that are used to describe you" is incorrect and probably a bit insulting to them. "Negro" is merely a Latinate word for "black." You seem to be suggesting that the very concept of a black person is an inherently racist, highly arbitrary concoction imposed upon the world by white Europeans as an inseparable part of their racial domination. This is a common overreach. We who wish to destroy the social significance of biological race need to watch out for that sort of thing.

[JFree]

"Negro" is merely a Latinate word for "black." You seem to be suggesting that the very concept of a black person is an inherently racist, highly arbitrary concoction imposed upon the world by white Europeans as an inseparable part of their racial domination.

First - I'd love to see the day when the US census stops collecting this sort of data. Until then - the most fundamental individual liberty one can have is the words by which one chooses to self-identify. I hope that our assertion/protection of that liberty is what destroys that census question by causing bureaucrats heads to explode in confusion. It's why I find 97 gender identities - a good start.

Second - as far as the actual science of ethnicity of humans. The FACT is virtually everyone whose ancestral origin is in Europe, Asia or the Americas descends from a teeny East African ancestral tribe of about 70,000 years ago. That population bottleneck then is the entirety of the 'Out of Africa' movement. Victorian era 'ethnicity science' is basically phrenology focused on the irrelevant. ACTUAL ethnicity is far more akin to - say - a map of Y-DNA Haplogroups. Of course, that sort of map puts Europeans, Chadians, and North Indians in the same sub-ethnicity so good luck coming up with what they have in common apart from actual ancestry.

[DiegoF]

But it's like air-brushing cigarettes from old pictures

Not all so old.

digitizing guns from not-so-old movies

Spielberg, the original SJW! (Good Lord, don't tell the alt-right!)

designing an FDR memorial that carefully never shows a wheelchair

Actually, it does show a wheelchair. That was the whitewash. In any case any FDR memorial is a whitewash unless it includes a Japanese-American family peering out from the barbed wire of their concentration camp at the white people stealing their property with government blessing, and a black family starving to death from the effects of his racist programs.

[Social Justice is neither]

I'd say it's more evil than simply airbrushing these things out of history. Instead they're actively replacing history which can be messy with their own narrative supported by fact adjacent anecdotes. In this way you can ignore the sharp turn in outcomes in the wake of the great society (increasing standard of living, education, etc. despite the segregation/bigotry of the era all started to turn negative after that program) and replace it with "400 years of oppression". In this way they never miss a beat in the narrative because somewhere things weren't perfect and any flaw today is seen as no different from the days of slavery which of course all right thinking people know didn't occur anywhere else in the world ever except colonial USA.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

how can you be a perpetually aggrieved victim if we're going to pretend the victimization never occurred?

We don't want to learn about slavery or Naziism, we want to forget it ever happened.

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

Reason editors, did you know your site is constantly crashing on Safari?

Commentators, are you guys having this issue?

[DiegoF]

Serves you right for using a proprietary browser!

(In all seriousness, as a Chromium user I am just glad they fixed the commenting lag.)

[DiegoF]

Oops! Spoke too soon. Get it together, Reason! Spend some of that Koch money on something other than haircare and saddle soap benefits.

[Rebel Scum]

"racist themes make it violent and oppressive for black students."

Isn't the premise defending a black guy against an unfounded rape allegation? Idc how many times the word "nigger" appears. Grow the hell up.

[DiegoF]

"Unfounded"? Please, sir. Woman is the nigger of the world. (Yes, she is. Think about it.)

[Longtobefree]

Can't teach from "to Kill a Mockingbird"? No problem.
Teach from 1984; a full and complete analysis of newspeak. The mentioned memo, and any three newspapers should provide sufficient context.

[buybuydandavis]

"Why would I read such a racist book!?!?"

[Will Nonya]

19 times in a whole book? Wow, that's horrible. If i wanted to be exposed to that much negative stereotyping and overuse of racial sluts I'd watch a rap video.

[DiegoF]

One can never overuse a racial slut, son. In my humble opinion.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

It's also a book about rape denialism.

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