I think there is a misunderstanding about this discourse here https://twitter.com/cultmtl/status/1321561116242300930

This so quickly descends into an idea that all examples of the historical use of these words will be somehow erased? I don’t know where this idea comes from?

I would put forward that “use” here is not clarified. Used as in said aloud is not the same as used as in included in teaching materials. Anyone who studies any visual materials from the last couple hundred years knows case studies with slurs are unavoidable.

I will say that in the art world, things do get renamed often to avoid slurs. This causes different issues but they are issues that I think people start being afraid of when the context of not being able to “use” slurs in the classroom get brought up.

Charmaine A. Nelson for ex. has written on “Portrait of a Haitian Woman” (1786) which she criticizes for its name change from “Portrait of a Negro Slave or Negress”, that she deems was done to appease white guilt and erase the Montreal artist’s racism and slave-owning status.

I don’t think people should be suspended for answering a student’s question about what a painting was previously called, it is obviously uncomfortable, but I don’t think anyone is calling for this.

Answering a question with a title having a slur is not the same as saying it more than once for things that do not need you to say it. Reading excerpts of huck finn don’t require you to say the word you can see it plain as day, it’s written more times than in a Tarantino script.

There’s a layer of willful misunderstanding I believe where white people want to make it seem as though in losing the right to use a slur when completely unnecessary to learning they’re witnessing the equivalent to book burning and losing their freedom of speech.

There’s obviously no erasing slurs from history, literature,or the past. It makes quite literally no sense to be afraid of this happening. What can be changed is how profusely slurs are used in the classroom—I’ve had a prof unnecessarily ”quote” slurs for a whole class’ duration.

I am unsure if those saying there are no reasons why any slur should leave your mouth for any reason would agree with me on this thread; what’s done out of uncomfortable clarification is by no means equivalent to unnecessary excessive use. I believe there are some profs—not all—

whom I would stand beside if a hypothetical blanket allegation of pronouncing slurs was placed against them under a means of necessary clarification for learning (like saying a painting’s previous title when asked for ex. as above). But I hope that would not happen.