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RaShaunda and Shenicka Sitting in a Racist Tree
My wife is back in university retooling for another run at the rat race employment. To that end, being a while out of university life she is taking a series of workshops to get back into the education mode and out of real-life mode. One of today’s workshop was writing where they use a website called chompchomp.com for grammar instruction. In one of the examples/lessons on comma splice or fused sentences, the following sentence was presented for class discussion and diagramming.
During English class, Anthony kept flirting with RaShaunda because his behavior was keeping Shenicka from understanding the lecture, Shenicka whacked him over the head with her heavy dictionary.
A young black womyn from the back immediately announced that the statement was racist to the bafflement both the instructor and the class. When asked why she said that it was because of the names. My wife commented that she just thought they were using random names to include everybody and if just the use of names were racist then everything was racist. The girl stated that they could not possibly understand the racism involved unless you were black and since they were white they could or would not see it. At this point my wife just shrugged her shoulders and turned her back to the next lesson in hand. The young black womyn left the class and was last seen heading to the university’s administration office.
This should be interesting to see how it plays out.
BTW, the example is a fused sentence.
Published in Education
There was a black girl at my junior high named LaQuandra.
Well, not necessarily. Again going back to my cousin, he got the name because his sister was small and couldn’t say “brother” properly. It came out “Bubba.”
That’s the usual story. Same with girls being called Sissy. One of my uncles was Bubba, and for a bunch of my cousins, my mom is Aunt Sissy.
Bubba’s actual name was Kittrall, so he also had the horrible name dynamic.
Fair. Point being, you can’t just start calling yourself Bubba, or anything else. There’s only one guy I know who self-assigned a nickname, and I do call him that, but not with any kind of respect.
Yeah, my cousin was actually the third named for Rutherford B. Hayes after his father and grandfather. What do you call a guy named Rutherford? Bubba. It’s obvious.
What does @hankrhody call himself?
Usually I have to do it because he’s lost his phone.
What’s ironic here is that those names were likely chosen by the creator of the lesson precisely because they do sound “black”, and he or she was trying to be inclusive.
Precisely why I’ve given up trying. Courtesy requires that if I know something offends somebody I should avoid it to the extent possible, but I refuse to walk on egg shells all the time. I might be willing if it would do any good, but it won’t.
All of you just don’t see the racism. Anthony, as already noted, is popular with Italian families. Italian men are stereotyped as being unable to remain true to one woman. Anthony is the Italian stereotype of a man who should be true to Rashaunda, but can’t help himself and is flirting with Shenicka, too. This horrible stereotyping of Italian American men is enough to drive anyone crazy.
I have known a whole passel of Anthonys who were not only not Italian, but also Black.
You’re killin’ me, Smalls.
The whole concept of not assigning yourself nicknames gave rise to my nickname “the hammer.”
So is the story a secret?
Shenicka whacked them over the head with their heavy dictionary.
…and you can’t spell dictionary without dic, so, like, patriarchy, man…
Maybe they identified as Italian. Hater.
To be honest, I pictured black people when I pictured RaShaunda and Shenicka. The names sound like the kind of names black parents started choosing for their children sometime after 1980.
I saw Anthony as white and Italian.
Re 41
You can’t avoid offending people when the problem is their own unacknowledged self loathing.
No, but I’m typing on my phone… if I remember, I’ll tell that story on the next “flyover country.” It’s not a super entertaining, like most of my stories. ;)
I’ve been checking for that recently.
We know from the pronouns that Anthony is male and Shenicka is female.
Any assumption about RaShaunda would be gender-offensive.
FIFY
Interesting, I just realized this made it to the main feed. I was not expecting that.
No one expects the Main Feed. Our two weapons are surprise, flirting, and they heavy dictionary…
…Our THREE weapons are….