Man, no one came out of that article looking good, including the victim. Just a terrible situation all around.

Fair enough. Yeah, that feels kinda weird.

Seems like they should have converted one lady’s room and one men’s room. Have 2/2/2. Though I guess converting a men’s room is probably a bigger project.

Do you have a source for that? It wasn’t in the article as far as I could tell.

I mean, I think “improperly obtained OpenAI’s data” with reference to China, probably means internal trade secrets were stolen. Wouldn’t be the first time China hacked a US corporation and stole all their IP, lol.

I really, genuinely don’t. You may not believe it, but those feel equally charged to me.

But I think that’s at the crux of our disagreement. My lived experience is that that phrase is uncharged, and your lived experience is that it’s terribly charged. This is probably due to regional or cultural differences, and honestly, that’s fine.

We could debate who’s lived experience is the more generalized one. Who is more representative of the average American. But honestly, I don’t know that it matters.

And even if you found out that 95% of people think it’s uncharged (which I’m not saying is the case), it still wouldn’t make it feel any different for you I’m sure, as again, in your lived experience that phrase is tantamount to a slur.

But all that said, I appreciate the discussion about it. It’s always interesting to come across these things that, due to fluctuations in region or age or whatever, both seem so obviously true to each side, while being so polarizing.

And I know I see you around here a lot, and I generally agree with you on stuff. So like, I know you’re not an unreasonable person or whatever. I respect your opinion on the issue even. We just disagree this time.

I’ll do that as soon as you find me one example of a teacher saying "hey there buster brown, why don’t you sit down!”

You probably can’t, because it’s not news worthy, as this wouldn’t be 99.9% of the time. The only reason this is, is because the kid in question was one, Arab, and two, offended. If either hadn’t been true, none of us would have ever heard about it.

But I recall people using that phrase in highschool. I remember teachers using it. That was back in the Bush era, to be fair, but it was pretty normative. We didn’t really have any Arab population, so not much chance of anyone being offended though.

The issue with your counter example is that there’s plenty of times a teacher might use the word terrorist in a classroom. Any history lesson covering the past half century for example. There are precious few times a teacher should be actively swearing in a classroom, in any context.

But if it’s a power dynamic thing, I’d be equally fine saying “I don’t negotiate with terrorists” to a subordinate at work if they were being a particular kind of dick, same as I would with a buddy. Because it’s a normal phrase people say.

Dang, the closest I could find in the NYC white pages was “Terrarese,” which like, sounds pretty close, but not quite there, lol. Some people’s parents give out some wild names, lol. I wouldn’t be shocked if there was a Terrorist Jones out there somewhere. But you’re right, that was largely tongue-in-cheek (which isn’t a racial epithet against people with big cheeks, and I’m sorry if you happen to have big cheeks and feel insulted).

But, to answer your question, no. Again, if the kid was like, “Mrs Marples, can I change seats,” and the teacher responded with, “screw you, you little terrorist,” then that’s clearly wildly out of line. But there are reasonable times to use the phrase “I don’t negotiate with terrorists” that aren’t racially charged. If I say that to a buddy (ethnically white American) who’s being a dick, I’m not some raging racist who hates Arab people. I used a reasonably common phrase, in the zeitgeist, at a time where it made sense to do so. And I’m not saying that’s definitely what happened here. I’m saying it could be the case, and I’m willing to give reasonable doubt until I see an article that’s more than 3 sentences long with less detail than was in the headline.

I mean, clearly it’s sometimes okay to call a kid a terrorist.

What if a highschool decides to do a stage production of The Hurt Locker, and one kid has to play a terrorist. Can the drama teacher call them “the terrorist” when blocking a scene?

What if a kid brings a gun to school and says, “I’m holding this school hostage as an act of terrorism!” Could a teacher refer to them as a terrorist then?

What if a kid’s first name is terrorist? Terrorist Jones they call him. Is a teacher not allowed to refer to them by their name?

It’s clearly okay to sometimes call a kid a terrorist. We’re just quibbling over when it’s okay to call a kid a terrorist.

In the scenario I outlined, it’s not an insult. It’s just a common turn of phrase.

For it to even possibly be an insult the teacher would have to know the students ethnic background. It wouldn’t be reasonable to construe it as an insult if the student wasn’t Arab. And a person’s ethnic background isn’t always apparent.

No one is arguing that it’s okay for teachers to insult students. Literally no one has taken that position in this conversation. People have asserted that point many times, but you keep circling back to it, so I’ll emphasize. Of course it’s not okay for teachers to insult students. Literally no one is arguing that, and you’re not listening.

I’m just saying a lot of common words and phrases can be loaded in certain circumstances. If I tell a child that’s hoarding toys, “now now, let’s not be greedy, we need to share with our friends, okay,” that’s fine. If it turns out that kid is Jewish though, it could taken very poorly.

Hell, a kid could tell me about their weekend plans, and I could say, “wow, that’s crazy,” not knowing their mom is in an institution, and the headline could read, “teacher tells student they are mentally unwell, just like their institutionalized mother.” Expecting someone to perfectly avoid all potentially charged language is impossible.

And I’m not saying that the person in the article is blameless. I’m saying the article has very very little in the way of detail, and I’m leary of joining a pitchfork weilding mob over what could have been a simple, though deeply unfortunate, choice of words.

I kinda doubt many seven year olds are asking for a seat change?

But, so long as we’re making up scenarios that support our side of the argument, what if it was an otherwise white presenting student, who’s ethnic background the teacher didn’t know, who told the teacher, “change my seat or I’ll beat your ass”?

Without full context, it’s hard to say how deplorable the usage of the phrase truly was. It could have been horrible and racist, sure. I’m not arguing that it couldn’t, or even that it wasn’t. I’m just arguing that it also could also have been a completely normal and understandable turn of phrase that was not intended to be offensive, but unfortunately was.

Maybe this is purely cultural/regional then. I grew up in an area without a large Muslim population. Perhaps the phrase was used pejoratively elsewhere.

Have you ever heard that phrase used as an insult? I’ve only ever heard it used as a joking way to say “no.” Especially in cases where the person is being bullheaded about something.

I’ve literally never heard that phrase used in a pejorative way.

I mean, I come from a place that that’s a normal thing people say. And I’d think I’m as likely to say it to a child as “I’ll be back,” or “clever girl,” or “what we have here is a failure to communicate,” or any number of other referential phrases that a child is unlikely to understand the reference to.

But maybe you’re right it’s an age/generational thing. It’s definitely a phrase still in the zeitgeist of people my age, but maybe less so in a younger demographic? Maybe that’s why there’s a skew in the comments, where some of us see it as a phrase as common and normal as “we’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and some think it’s super out of left field and weird.

But the child not getting the reference is immaterial. Part of learning language is learning what phrases are in the zeitgeist. It’s not weird for me to use any of the above phrases with a child, even if they haven’t seen any of the things they’re from.

I think calling a black child a monkey without that being part of an established pattern or without reason would be racist, sure.

But if a whole kindergarten class was acting crazy, and a teacher said they were acting like moneys, and that class happened to have a black child in it, I wouldn’t think they were racist for calling that black child a monkey.

And if a news story ran that had the headline, “racist teacher calls black child a monkey,” and those were the facts presented, I’d call it rage bait.

So the question of whether this child was singled out and called a terrorist with racial intent, or we just have a teacher using a normal phrase with no racial intent seems a relevant point.

You mean like in the comic?

Do they still make Warheads? Those were the sour candy when I was growing up, lol.

I might grant questionable, but not super.

I think a large part of why it was a 9-0 decision was that it’s not speech to run a social media site. It’s commerce, plain as day. Congress has the authority to regulate commerce full stop. The fact that China is using that platform to spread misinformation, and then claiming that stopping them from doing so is a 1A violation is just a red herring.

“Money is speech” just means rich people can donate all the money they want to a politician. Not that you can run an otherwise unlawful business because “money is speech and free speech is a thing!”

How is it any different than the Russian propaganda campaign to get Trump elected? Or was that something you were fine with as well?

When you let a foreign government run an active psyop campaign against your citizens, you’re just begging for instability and chaos.

I mean, yeah? Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press are inalienable rights, sure, but they’re generally intended to extend to citizens. Not foreign governments.

There’s a big difference between a Chinese citizen here on a green card going around saying they love China and a company running an active misinformation campaign on orders from their government.

It’s no different than how the government tried to crack down on Russian election interference. Turns out, hostile nations running psyops campaigns is bad.