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Purdue University Northwest Chancellor Thomas L. Keon mocked Asian languages in a commencement speech Saturday.

https://twitter.com/vanjchan/s.../1603054759837327360

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/16...mocks-asian-language

Do we know what he's like as a person? Does he really believe that other races are inferior?

What he said was thoughtless, unprofessional, and unkind. Does it qualify as racism?

As someone who has had more than her fair share of foot-in-mouth disease episodes, I kinda feel for the guy, especially after reading about the context of the comment and also his apology.

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I kinda feel for the guy

Not me. He's a chancellor at an institution with almost 10,000 students and he most certainly has a significant salary. And his remarks were when he was acting in an official capacity at an event that graduates and their families use to mark significant accomplishments. And his remarks marred that event. When people are paid to be leaders, they need to act like leaders.

Basically, I expect more from highly paid educational leaders. A lot more.

Was it racist? Well I guess it depends on how you want to define racism. I am pretty comfortable labeling this as racist, discriminatory, and othering. Also ignorant. And again, I'm not keen to give someone a pass for being ignorant when they're in a top level administrative position at an educational institution.

Part of my research deals with linguistic discrimination and linguistic microaggressions. One aspect of microaggressions is that they are harmful, regardless of the presence or absence of intent. Linguistic microaggressions zero in on linguistic characteristics and set apart speakers displaying those characteristics as other.

Also, there's a long history of mocking the speech of Asians. He didn't pull those made up words out of a vacuum. He pulled them out of a racist history that remains painfully current.

We seem to be holding people to impossibly high standards that no one can live up to.

The way I see it: He's human. He made a mistake. It was brought to his attention. He apologized and said he would do better.

Forgiveness is OK, and I think our world needs more of it.

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impossibly high standards

Knowing that faking an Asian accent is racist is not an impossibly high standard for someone working in education. Knowing that violent attacks against Asians and Asian Americans have increased since covid and recognizing that those attacks didn't come out of nowhere, they came out of racist hatred, and knowing that, as a result, it's imperative to raise your own awareness so you don't make a misstep like this in public at an official event is not an impossibly high standard for a highly paid education official.

I agree with you that forgiveness is important, but I might feel more inclined towards it if his apology didn't ring so hollow.

I'm sorry, I respect you so much and my impression of your overall way of looking at the world is that it is guided by kindness, which I think is absolutely the right thing to be guided by.

But I can't agree with your take on this one.

And to be frank, I'm fresh out of sympathy for white men in privileged positions of power. ETA: again, he's in education, it's his job to know these things.

Yep, the modern dilemma.

The more we slowly roast people like him over the coals, and especially when using terms like "linguistic micro aggressions" borrowed from the "woke" playbook, the more we will watch centrist suburbia happily pull the "R" lever in upcoming elections.

On the other hand, we shouldn't give an easy pass to this thoughtless behavior -- and yes, it originates in a background likely rich in his unrecognized implicit biases (yeah, more woke language).

The problem for him is that his future effectiveness as an administrator may be fatally compromised by his "mistake." He has bosses, and those bosses may want to cut their losses.

Governor Northam in Virginia offers a lesson. He was able to tough out the criticism, and it was especially harsh from his own party (the leftward side of it). Republican criticism of him didn't matter because it was so transparently hypocritical. Northam survived because his contrition was sincere, he had a very good working relationship with the people he had offended (African American community) and he immediately went to work to rebuild trust. He could do that because no one could "fire" him, and the costs of trying to impeach him allowed him to squash opposition within his own party after the first few days of kerfuffle.

I'm not thinking Keon has those advantages. He's an employee.

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terms like "linguistic micro aggressions" borrowed from the "woke" playbook

I think it's a mistake to relegate microaggression in this way.

Comments that reinforce social exclusion are hurtful to those on the receiving end of them, and recognizing that those hurts are a problem and that it's worth working to reduce their occurrence is worth attention and effort, while your description of them as part of a woke playbook suggestions they don't matter.

I don't think the prefix "micro-" applies here at all. When people talk about microaggressions, they are generally speaking of small behaviors that a person might not even realize were hurtful to someone else. This man was fully aware that he was intentionally making fun of someone else's speech. In my opinion, that is completely unprofessional, especially for someone in such a high position.

The fact that there is a racial element to what he did is obscuring the point. It wouldn't have been okay if he'd been making fun of someone with a speech impediment or a deaf person or a developmentally disabled person. There's rarely a time and place when it's okay to make fun of someone else, but to do so while presiding at an important ceremony where some of the honorees must have felt that his insulting behavior applied to their speech patterns is beyond the pale. The fact that the insulting behavior had a racist aspect simply underscores how inappropriate his behavior was.

I think you misunderstood my meaning by phrasing things that way.

I'm making a claim about political fact as I see it, not about social justice.

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The way I see it: He's human. He made a mistake. It was brought to his attention. He apologized and said he would do better.

Forgiveness is OK, and I think our world needs more of it.

There are probably 40 million centrist voters who would agree with this.

Keon is likely to lose his job over this, and once that happens he is unlikely to ever work again in his chosen field in academia. I've given the reasons why I think this will happen without opining on whether or not it should. Well, I did say I thought that his behavior was rooted in bias.

Lots of people of good will -- wtg for instance -- seem uncomfortable with slowly roasting people like this who err, recognize their error, and promise to make amends. To many of those people the language of the social justice movement spans the range from merely incomprehensible to distinctly off-putting and holier-than-thou. This is a very important voting group, as the midterms revealed for the umpteenth time.

P*D, ahh, thanks for clarifying!!

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Keon is likely to lose his job over this, and once that happens he is unlikely to ever work again in his chosen field in academia.

I've been thinking about this and I can't settle on what I think about it...

Should someone lacking awareness to this level be a chancellor? My current answer is no. Should it ruin his whole life? Also no.... Maybe I need some more distance from the topic first....

As you might imagine, this particular issue hits close to home, esp. since my spouse suffers from insecurity because he believes his English is insufficient. His feelings don't come from an imagined anxiety, but rather from having been on the receiving end of mistreatment by people who either think he can't understand them, or aren't willing to slow down and engage enough to ensure that he can.

Anyway, separate from all of that, your points about current politics are well made...

I just don't know how things ever change without accountability.

Perhaps the problem is that, like so many things right now, there's no middle ground, and accountability is either completely absent, or it's a gigantic sledgehammer that destroys everything in its path.

People, and Americans in particular, are not very good with nuance...

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As you might imagine, this particular issue hits close to home, esp. since my spouse suffers from insecurity because he believes his English is insufficient. His feelings don't come from an imagined anxiety, but rather from having been on the receiving end of mistreatment by people who either think he can't understand them, or aren't willing to slow down and engage enough to ensure that he can.

Yes, I thought your feelings about this case had an important personal dimension. I don't have that direct connection, of course. But I have a great sympathy for people whose spoken English doesn't match their reading/understanding. I have seen so many students denigrate professors, especially professors from Asia, over their accent. Often, this is just laziness and entitlement on their part. Sometimes, universities do put people in front of a class when their spoken English is a real problem (there I have personal experience through my wife). But usually it's just a careless and thoughtless entitlement as I said.

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I just don't know how things ever change without accountability.

Perhaps the problem is that, like so many things right now, there's no middle ground, and accountability is either completely absent, or it's a gigantic sledgehammer that destroys everything in its path.

People, and Americans in particular, are not very good with nuance...

Yep. I have no satisfactory answer. What would accountability look like here? The simple answer is, fire the guy and be done with it.

I've laid out reasons why I think this is probable, but the more I think about it the less sure I am of that outcome. As Chancellor, he is more like our governor Northam. He doesn't have a single boss whose incentives are to dismiss him as fast as possible. His board and possibly the political leadership in Indiana would have to rebel against him. That's a more complicated political equation. Keon may be able to play that situation to his advantage in holding onto his position. His apology may prove to be enough.

The man is too stupid to be in that position.

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Originally posted by CHAS:
The man is too stupid to be in that position.

That's about where I come down on this.

There aren't many times when I'd say, "Yeah, go ahead a ruin that person's life." A serial killer? Yeah, go ahead and ruin that life, but this does not rise to that level.

But I don't think anybody who is this tone deaf belongs in that position, so I don't have a problem saying, "Probably oughta go find another job, buddy." People get fired for cause every day of the week.

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I don't think the prefix "micro-" applies here at all.

MA, I completely missed your post!

Re this comment, yes! I was going to mention that, if for no other reason than speaking publicly to such a large crowd negates anything micro about it.

Re your other comments, yes, it would be equally deplorable if the mocking was of some other group. And unfortunately, there is also a history of people with speech impediments or other disabilities being mocked (recall the past *sshole in chief...)

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The fact that there is a racial element to what he did is obscuring the point.

Well, I do think it's important to call out the racial element, because that's a huge part of it.

In any case, we agree on the essence here.

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Yes, I thought your feelings about this case had an important personal dimension.

Yes.

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But I have a great sympathy for people whose spoken English doesn't match their reading/understanding. I have seen so many students denigrate professors, especially professors from Asia, over their accent. Often, this is just laziness and entitlement on their part. Sometimes, universities do put people in front of a class when their spoken English is a real problem (there I have personal experience through my wife). But usually it's just a careless and thoughtless entitlement as I said.

Yes the issue with international TAs is tricky. Of course it's essential that the TA can communicate and can be understood, but sometimes there's so much resistance and stereotyping that there's an assumption that TA is unintelligible before they even open their mouth!

As you say, the entitlement is real!