Picnic

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:03 PM -0400 7/21/02, Mark A Mandel wrote:
>Larry's quotation from the Snopes cite was truncated, at least as I
>received it. Not really important, as I'm sure I can find the whole
>thing by searching Snopes for "picnic".
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel

Oops, sorry. I also seem to have misspelled Mikkelson's name.  I'll
fill it in below, in its proper place (including the moral Mikkelson
draws from it all).  The excerpt from the National Post article, i.e.
the anecdote from SUNY Albany, contains the reference you mentioned
in your earlier post, attributed to Zaheer Mustafa below.  (That is,
"I thought I had seen a statement in this thread that someone who was
informed of its falsehood replied that its truth or falsehood was
irrelevant to him, as the word was offensive".)  This isn't that
different a conclusion from the one drawn by the mayoral aide in the
"niggardly" flap--something along the lines of "I know the word
doesn't mean what they thought it meant, but I should have been more
careful anyway because its use offended them".  And after all, you
CAN insult someone inadvertently.

larry

>
>On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Laurence Horn wrote:
>
>         [...]
>
>#Barbara Mickelson's response at snopes.com (Nov. 15, 2000):
>
>         [...]
>#on the Internet. Of course, the fact that it's spurious hasn't
>#deterred those who are determined to find something to be offended
>#by, as noted in this excerpt from a recent National Post article:
>#
>#                 Meanwhile, things are not peachy on the campus of
>#SUNY/Albany. The university wanted to honour baseball legend Jackie
>#Robinson by having a picnic.  But the university's equity office said
>#this must not occur because the word "picnic" referred originally to
>#gatherings held to lynch Blacks. In fact, as one of their own English
>#professors (rather less committed to historical revisionism
>#than RMC's Dr. Robinson) pointed out, the word "picnic" actually
>#comes from a 17th-century French word that denotes a party at which
>#everyone brings food.  But Zaheer Mustafa, the equity officer,
>#nevertheless decreed that "picnic" not be used because "the point is
>#-- the word offends." So the university decided to call it an
>#"outing." Then, homosexual students took objection to that, and SUNY
>#decided to publicize the
event without using any noun to describe it.
[Now back to Mikkelson herself]


           There's a very real downside to spouting hoax definitions
just because they push a few buttons: It makes those doing the
yelling look uneducated and uneducable. Those who run with their
emotions instead of using their heads end up doing the racists' work
for them by making themselves appear to be foolish shadow-jumpers
incapable of cracking open any random dictionary before yelling that
the sky is falling. This popeyed caricature image is not something
one wishes to foster if racism is to be defeated; it merely serves to
reinforce the white supremacists' claim that blacks are inherently
inferior.

           Barbara "nitpicnic'ing" Mikkelson