A UCLA professor has received much Social Justice outrage(calling him a racist) and is guilty of "micro aggressions" against a Black student for correcting grammar and spelling issues on the Student's paper. Who do you side with?
However, it was not simply a matter of objecting to having to spelling and grammar corrected, per se, as the poll question and headline imply. (And what's up with making a photo out of the news article and posting a link to the photo rather than to the article itself? Seems like an extra step or three, resulting in reduced information.)
It was about corrections that were perceived to be about *ideology.* The students felt that their beliefs were being "corrected."
I still side with the professor. But to make this seem to be purely an objection to correct spelling and grammar is simply wrong, and very misleading.
I don't think this article specifies what the "corrections" were. I did some googling and found other articles that listed only one specific correction; the professor specified that "Indigenous" should not be capitalized. This is why I side with the professor, although I'd really like to see other examples of exactly what he corrected, and maybe more importantly, *how* - that is, did he appear to be racist in his *remarks* about the corrections.
There was also an instance of a methodology a student wanted to use (feminism something something), which he apparently doesn't feel is valid. He stated outright that he handled the situation poorly, so apparently he acknowledges at least ruffling some feathers over that.
Again, I'm not convinced by what I've managed to find that the professor was intentionally racist in his actions or comments. I just think that the situation is nowhere near as simplistic as claiming that it's students were saying it's racist to correct the grammar etc. of a minority student. That's just flat-out wrong, and presents an entirely idiotic picture, which people who don't look farther will carry in their heads as what minorities think.
I don't even know that it's in the news *now,*, and the original story is *over* two years old. Two of the links in this thread (suppressed's and my 2nd one) show the incidents occurred at least as far back as Nov. 2013. The article I linked to first (which is the same one in the poll's link to an imgur photo) doesn't have a date I can find, but mentions that it "happened over a year ago but the story is only now going viral." Which makes it sound as if *that* article itself is at least a year old.
I'm not sure why it's being brought up now (especially without an update so we could see if things got resolved somehow), except, well, to agitate a bit.
Thank you! That's an extremely helpful article. It goes into the issue much more deeply than any of the news bits I managed to find, and it seems to be pretty fair to both sides.
That's the kind of thing I had been looking for, as I poked through links in various news pieces, but I just didn't turn it up. As it was, I pretty much had to read between the lines of what I found.
Based on the poll question and link only, there has not been any reason to represent that the corrections had anything to do with racism.
It does seem strange that this an issue. There must be more to the story.
Unfortunately I don't have the time to follow any of the links in comments below.
Show of Hands
Comments: Add Comment