(TargetLiberty.org) – California’s university system, already mired in controversy over new mandatory race classes for Cal State campuses, shot itself in the foot again last week. The crime this time? A professor was removed from a class because he used a Chinese word that sounds like – but isn’t – a racial slur.
Professor Greg Patton, who teaches business communication at the USC’s Marshall School of Business, was delivering a class on the use of filler words. He was telling students that each culture has its own equivalent of “um” and “er,” and explained that Mandarin speakers use nèi ge, nèi ge, nèi ge – meaning “that, that, that” – to cover pauses or hesitation. Unfortunately for Patton nèi ge is pronounced nay-guh, and some of his class turned out to be too fragile to hear it.
A group who claim to be black MBA candidates wrote to the school’s dean to complain they were “offended,” their “mental health has been affected” and they find Patton “emotionally exhausting.” Linking the common Chinese term to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, they insisted “we cannot let this stand.”
I cannot believe this is real, but it is.
This USC Professor is on leave after students were offended that a Chinese word he used during a lecture on foreign languages sounded like an english racial slur.
Watch the video for yourself: pic.twitter.com/HkFPMEP5I2
— Cabot Phillips (@cabot_phillips) September 3, 2020
Amazingly, instead of simply telling them to grow up and stop being so hypersensitive, the dean suspended Patton while they review the situation and take “appropriate next steps.”
Copyright 2020, TargetLiberty.org
