Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Teaching / Society -- Freedom of speech on the State's payroll

For the last couple of days I've been hearing a local news story advertised.. both on TV and on the radio. It features a woman yelling things like "Europeans are f-ing wetbacks, man" -- she's at a rally in a small town.

They did an interview with her. Her position is that people who are in the minority can't be racist because they lack the power. She says that calling someone a typically racist name isn't racism. I'm not at all sure I agree, but it is a widely held position.. the news acted as if it WAS news (how f-ing ignorant is that... by the way??).

Then the story moved to the person making the complaints and who had obviously made the home video and relesased it to the news... This ass-hat was interviewed as well, his complaint is that "she's on the state payroll, I pay her salary -- she shouldn't say those racist things in public".

Folks, the woman saying the bad stuff is on the state payroll because she teaches at BN University. She teaches a course on racism. This was a MAJOR hook on the advertising etc..

At the end of the story, they tossed in the response from the U of M, which was pretty much "she has free speech".

Ummm--- duh -- AND Academic Freedom. This is an area she knows about. She's an immigration lawyer and an activist. She has the right to express an opinion on her area of expertise. This is a non-story.

1 comment:

T-Mac said...

Good call.