posted
"No. You haven't started a fight, you have intentionally offended people. If we say it's okay to slug anyone that offends you, then we're in for a whole lotta slugging going on."
I didn't say it was ok.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
It's consistent, but I'm still not sure I buy it. How would you allow this to affect legal culpability, either criminal or civil?
Say both parties suffer minor injuries that require one doctor visit each for stictches, no third-party property is damaged. Should both be charged with misdemeanor assault? Just instigator?
On the civil side, who should pay whose doctor's bills? Should anyone get other damages?
My worry is that penalizing the person at law for purely expressive action amounts to penalizing speech.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
I agree with the war analogy in the sense that fighting doesn't necessarily require physical contact nor is it limited to a specific type of combat.
The two problems I see with determining a punishment is that A) you punish the offender which raises the issue that Dag mentioned above or B) you do not punish the offender which implies that hurting someone physically is wrong, but hurting someone emotionally is acceptable.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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quote: This kid was lucky they didn't really jump him. With that shirt I think getting off with a punch in the nose was getting off easy
I have to agree with you. I mean I'm a white teenage boy, and to be honest, if i saw some kid wearing a T-shirt like that, he's got about a 50/50 chance of me kicking his butt.
Yes I would be wrong, but I have little to no respect for people who think encouraging the bigotry of our nations past is amusing, and unfortunately these people have a real knack for turning up on days when I'm already about to kill people.
Posts: 1094 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
btw, that was a horribly written article. Is this what passes for journalism in Jacksonville?
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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People in my school would be suspended for wearing that...it was listed as one of the possible punishments for violating school rules, and it would have been applied.
Completely legal, because it was listed as a punishment for violating the schools policies. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
This is a free-speech issue. Idiots have a right to their idiocy. It's in the Constitution, and I for one will fight to the death for their right. Or at least until I get bored.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Disruption is one of the reasons cited by SCOTUS for limiting student free speech rights.
It's very dangerous ground, however. Unpopular political positions can invoke similar reactions, and limiting speech because of the expected immature reactions of other students strikes me as horribly wrong.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
But that can be decided on a case-by-case basis. I mean, it's one thing to protest injustice in a school-- such as Hispanic students not being allowed to play on the school baseball team (hypothetical case.) It's another to wear offensive and pointlessly provocative and disruptive clothing.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Right...which is why he would ahve been suspended for violating the dress code, not for being a bigot.
Trust me, there were plenyy of reasons why my high school, a school in the Detroit suburbs, would have had experience with things like this, and they had found a way to punish the student for this without giving cause for a lawsuit.
Or at least making sure the kid couldn't win such a lawsuit. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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If wearing a slogan on a t-shirt is protected as free speech, would there be laws against 'hate crimes' that apply?
Posts: 251 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Hmmm. up here in Canada we have laws prohibiting speech that "incites hatred against a recognizable group". Although I admit that wearing this particular shirt is more likely to incite the general public to hate the wearer. Posts: 251 | Registered: Apr 2005
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If I ran a school, any students wearing political slogans would have to defend them in a debate at lunchtime. Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote: I hate to interrupt this discussion, but haven't we lost sight of the topic here?
Sure we have, Tante -- this is Hatrack afterall...
According to my dictionary:
hatrack (hǽ•ʧɹæk) 1.v.t. the act of having a thread derail from the original meaning and intention of the first post, e.g. “Jeez! This thread is hatracking nowhere”; 2.n.c. a thread that has been derailed hatrackingly from the original purpose, e.g. "some of the recent threads became hatracks". [Term; forum behaviour.]
---
I think the kid should have never brought the shirt to school. And as for his racism - I can speak from experience of a friend of mine in class: he's South African (from the Cape), hates blacks but not because of their genetics - just 'cause of Affirmative Action, because they smell different, and because they've been known to be criminals. It's a little similar to the way many blacks in the US acted and why [[/i]as far as I heard[/i], and correct me if I'm wrong - based on the whole 'poor neighbourhoods leading to crime' argument].
Assuming that's why the kid hated negros, then I guess that he wasn't trying to be provocative; and though he may dislike the blacks, he wasn't flashing it around school publicly.
Or so we are told, anyway.
The Bible, by the way, states many times that you're supposed to accept the Egyptian who's among your people specifically because you were a slave in his land. As a victim (and let's say - true or false - that the kid grew up in a black-hating environment excused by the fact that the blacks commited crimes against many of the while landlords), according to the Bible not only have you no right to start whinging for not receiving privileges, but you have the responsibility of not doing such a thing to another person, specifically because you were treated badly.
The statement which is said many times throughout the book of Deuteronomy (appearing in slightly different forms - compare 24:22 and 24:18), usually after sorbidding the act of treating a weaker link in the community in a bad way, is something like "and remember that you have been a slave in the land of Egypt, therefore I command you to do this thing".
Also, look at Leviticus 18:26, 19:33-34, and consequently 19:18. You have a responsibility to love the newcomer/immigrant (however you don't translate "ger") as one of your own.
I reckon that lad's done something that's should not be ethically excused. Not to mention that if he's got any sense of respect for the Bible, this shows how wrong he is.
The punishment in such a case? Leviticus 18:29.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: My step-father was one of the most bigoted people I ever knew, and it was one reason my mother left him, honestly, it got to be too much to take. He used to tell me (as if passing on bits of wisdom) that there were three kinds of black people: First there were cops, like him. And they were okay, because they were cops. Then there were people who were "just black people" because they made attempts to lift themselves up and be better people through education or hard work and thirdly there were (insert epithet), and that was the vast majority of them and they just weren't worth anything.
Then, he would tell you he wasn't a racist because he went to a black doctor. But of course, that black doctor was in category number 2, so he was okay.
Wow, this sounds just like my grandfather, Belle. Even the black doctor bit.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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posted
"I'd say the one who actually hit his fellow student in the head because he didn't like the latter's shirt should be the one getting a heavier punishment. Oddly, the article fails to say whether he'd been penalized at all."
I think if he was penalized, it would be best to keep it quiet. There would probably be a huge protest from the black community if the kid was penalized. My guess is the school's administration (or whoever decided to penalize him) would end up being called racist. Assuming the kid was penalized, of course.
Posts: 853 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
You don't get to punch peoploe who wear insulting shirts. In no way is the black kid's response appropriate. The problem is that I'm not sure what an appropriate response entails--- possibly articulating the damaging effects of centuries of servitude and indignity-- which is why it's always easier to be the oblivious white kid in these situations. I imagine sexual harrassment is a similar situation.
There is something "Billy Budd"ish about this mess.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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"You don't get to punch peoploe who wear insulting shirts. In no way is the black kid's response appropriate. The problem is that I'm not sure what an appropriate response entails"
Yeah, punching the kid just ends up reinforcing his racism. Its definetely a problem. Thats why I voted for lyncing
What the hell is this? It ain't the International Phonemic Alphabet, that's for sure!
By the way, I asked my father - a linguist - whether I got it right (and not missed something trivial). "Yes, that's right", was what I got as a reply.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
Jonathan, hatrack is pronounced with two syllables, the first consisting of hat and the second of rack. It is not pronounced ha track.
Posts: 1658 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
No, Hatrack is made up of two morphemes, hat and rack. It is perfectly valid to pronounce it something like "hatchrack," although that is not how I pronounce it*. Many people pronounce the word truck as "chruck", but you won't even notice this unless you are listening very closely or are a linguist.
The only time most people are actually going to say "hat rack" is if they are saying it very slowly and enunciating.
Some of the symbols that Jonathan used don't display on my computer, so I can't be certain that he's 100% right. But his description sounds right.
*The other common way to pronounce it would be "ha'rak" where the ' is a glottal stop.
posted
I think it would be safe to say that there are several ways of pronouncing it, and of course everyone is going to deem their way as "the correct way," but there doesn't have to be only one "correct way."
As for myself, I tend to say hat-rack. Compound word and all, you know. I salute those of you who choose differently, though! Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Mind you, my father and I probably know how to pronounce more glottal stops - not to mention fricatives - than you (at least I know many of the fricatives). I'm now going through about two months of studying how glottal stops and fricatives make big phonem/tic differences in Hebrew.
And you know what? I'll write the IPA for Hatrack that way I pronounce it in my lexicon; you want it your way? Write your own.
Also, I had most of my pose regarding the racism bit. You decided to get hooked on the linguistic part. So it's not my fault, especially when I was referring to the previous hatrack that happened.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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Someone said in the glottal stop thread (maybe Tom_D, too lazy to search) that it's a website named after a river named after a rack that holds hats - how do you think it's pronounced?
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Yeah, but lets face it... OSC isn't from anywhere near where the river is supposed to be, so has no idea how pronunciation actually works Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:The racist started the fight... he just didn't throw the first punch.
You could say that. Or you could say the guy who sold that kid the shirt started the fight, because he should have known it was offensive and that a kid wearing it around would get in a fight. Or, for that matter, you can say that God started the fight, since he really set all of this in motion in the first place. In fact, every person who in any way led to this incident, whether directly or indirectly, started that fight. That's how causation works - there is no single cause for anything, only an infinite string of causes, all of which could be considered "the cause" of that end result because each could have changed to prevent that exact end result.
What matters, however, is that it is the person who actually threw the punches who deserves the most punishment - not because he was the only one who "started" the fight, but because he was the only one fighting with no excuse. The victim can claim self-defense, and those who joined in can claim they were defending one side or another, but the one who threw the first punch can only claim what really happened - that he lost his cool when he should not have. Being offended is not an excuse.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote: That t at the end of the Hat is a softer t than some, but it is clearly pronounced.
Which is why it is merged as an affricate.
quote: That's OK, JH...not many people here particularily care about your "lexicon" anyway.
Then why, for half a page, are you discussing it?
We weren't....we were discussing a silly nOOb who can't pronounce Hatrack right, but still feels he can lecture us on it's pronouncation, even to the point of disagreeing with the dictonary pronouncation.
There is a difference. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
To be honest, I'm going to tell you a big fat lie if I start my sentence that way.
And guys, I ALWAYS pronounce it Ha track. It's a place, not a thing to hang my hat on! (I just like the way it sounds better.)
Posts: 870 | Registered: Mar 2005
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