Professor Accused of Racism for Telling Student Not To Write N-Word

You can never satisfy the perpetually offended. When you embrace the idea that anyone who disagrees with you is evil, it’s just a matter of time before you start eating your own.

Pomona College theater professor Rose Portillo is reportedly being accused of racism by a snowflake student — and the student has taken the outrageous step of plastering posters all over campus to name and shame the professor. Of course, the incident had nothing to do with racism, just outrage culture.

Will the student’s bullying work instead? Here’s what the poster reads, per Campus Reform:

“On Tuesday, April 17th, I was organizing song cues for one of Pomona College’ Theatre Department’s upcoming productions. My professor Rose Portillo [emphasis in original] walked up to me in class and said: ‘Nothing with nigga in it.’ I said ‘don’t say that.’ She replied ‘I’m saying it.’”

The student concludes the poster by stating “That’s racist.”

Obviously, if Portillo had simply said “the n-word,” that could have been interpreted as literally “the n-word.” Which would likely have been appropriate — appropriateness is exactly why people use “the n-word.”

Hence Portillo’s probable need to be explicit by speaking the word itself.

She’s not alleged to have called anyone that word. Actually, according to the poster itself, Portillo was obviously trying to prevent that racist word from being used on campus.

She was met with rudeness. It sounds like she did not appreciate what the student was insinuating: that the professor was somehow racist for speaking the word in that specific situation. I’d have probably popped off something similar. The student deserved a rebuke for having such careless, anemic reasoning skills and a knee-jerk response.

This student appears to be suffering from the entitlement affliction that has destroyed an entire generation’s ability to reason and to cope. Identity politics did this: it created endless, subjective reasons to divide and destroy each other. We are not identities, we are individuals.

And yes, I think it starts with language — we’ve crafted nonsensical rules about which identity is allowed to speak certain words or weigh in on certain issues.

Enough with the idiocy. How about everyone behave like adults and not pretend they have a license to use racially derogatory words as casual speech without judgment. Just don’t use them unless you must for specificity, as in the situation above. Otherwise, cut it out — because you’re adults. And judge each other on content of character, not on irrational, subjective codes of conduct.