So let's be clear about what happened, here.<p>During a meeting about offensive words in comedy, Friedland said the word "nigger". We don't know the context, but we do know that people who were in the room with him were uncomfortable with his using it.<p>Later, he met with two black employees to talk about his use of the word during the meeting about offensive words. During this meeting, he used the word again.<p>Now, I can appreciate the incandescent radioactivity of that word. I can, I think, begin to imagine what a black person might feel upon hearing a white person say it.<p>But at some point we have to be able to talk about words as words. If you're having a discussion about offensive language, the demand that one word be euphemized is infantile. So, too, if you're having a discussion about some people's reaction to the use of that word. We have to be able to recognize that the discussion of a word as a word, and the use of that word as an epithet, are completely separate phenomena.<p>By way of illustration, if a sociologist were to conduct a study about the use of racial epithets among various groups of people, would you expect them to publish a paper that analyzed the use of "the N-word", or would you expect them to analyze the use of the word "nigger"? If the former, why? Of what stuff is built this wall of timid prevarication?
There's a few things about this (specifically and in general) that are frustrating.<p>Writing 'the n-word' is similar to saying 'the f word' or 'the c bomb' - everyone knows what we're referring to, and I suspect many simply mentally substitute the actual word as they read.<p>There's some Le Guin style 'power of true names' thing going on with the myriad words that are somewhere on the sensitive-to-offensive spectrum for whoever you may be talking to or near.<p>It's especially tricky for non-USA persons, as a lot of US pop-culture is exported, and it comes bundled with a surfeit of political, social, and historical cruft we are expected to track.<p>In AU it famously caught out one of our comedians in 1979 during an award show, when he used the word 'boy' with Muhammad Ali [1] -- spectacularly neither the host, nor pretty much anyone watching in the ballroom or at home, had any idea it meant something other than someone younger than you, let alone something derogatory.<p>The wonderful comedian Reginald D Hunter has a strong opinion on the matter -- basically that as long as we all keep skirting around certain words they'll maintain their regrettably powerful effect over people -- but he has the benefit of being in a demographic (black <i>and</i> a comedian) that, by social convention, can casually drop the word. Anyway, I love the idea, but I have no idea how we can get there from here.<p>[1] Search: bert newton muhammad ali
Obviously the guy should have been fired if the intent was to offend or demean. Personally, I would never in any circumstances use the word. But do we or don't we want black culture to shape all of american culture? The word shows up in movies, TV shows, and music that white people consume and enjoy. When a word is offensive enough that it is derogatory when a white person uses it no matter the context, but okay for a black person, that is a cultural form of separate but equal. Either make the word something everybody can say or nobody can say. I vote the latter but if black people truly want to reclaim the word as a positive, then I am okay with that as long as anybody can use the word (at least with positive intent).<p>EDIT: Black people took a word that meant something horrible and made it into such a good thing among themselves that even white people want in on the goodness of the word. How is that not a huge cultural achievement that they should be proud of and allow the broader culture to take up? Doesn't it show the strength of their community to make something awful into something good?
Reed Hasting’s letter is coming from a point of view I find very strange.<p>>The first incident was several months ago in a PR meeting about sensitive words. Several people afterwards told him how inappropriate and hurtful his use of the N-word was, and Jonathan apologised to those that had been in the meeting. We hoped this was an awful anomaly never to be repeated.<p>Guy slipped up, apologized, and was warned. Makes sense to me.<p>> Three months later he spoke to a meeting of our Black Employees @ Netflix group and did not bring it up, which was understood by many in the meeting to mean he didn’t care and didn’t accept accountability for his words.<p>Why was he expected to bring up unintentional mistakes made months ago? At what point can someone be allowed to let bygones be bygones?<p>> For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script). There is not a way to neutralize the emotion and history behind the word in any context. The use of the phrase “N-word” was created as a euphemism, and the norm, with the intention of providing an acceptable replacement and moving people away from using the specific word. When a person violates this norm, it creates resentment, intense frustration, and great offense for many.<p>Perhaps I’m not coming from the same cultural background as Reed (or his PR advisers) I don’t really understand how the mere utterance of a word, without the intention to offend or even to use it as anything other than a descriptor for the word itself, can be this offensive. For my part, I’m trans, and I don’t feel “resentment, intense frustration, and great offense” when I hear people speaking slurs referentially, as long as they’re trying to refer to the words themselves as opposed to using them as labels for a person or group.<p>I would find it very helpful if someone can explain this to me.
> For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script)<p>Alright, I'll ask it: why? Or, perhaps a better question: how can you justify saying that there are situations in which it is constructive for a black person to say it but not for a white person? Is this not simply its own form of racism? As a word, I understand that it has cultural charge, but why should people's right to speak a word be derived simply from who they <i>happened</i> to be born to, an event completely outside of their control?
I think Johnathan Friedland is really wishing right now that his comments were evaluated within the context of the content of his character, and not the context of the color of his skin.
>For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script).<p>That kind of rings hollow while Netflix continues to offer movies in which non-Black people use this word-that-shall-not-be-named.
"Three months later he spoke to a meeting of our Black Employees @ Netflix group..."<p>Wait, what? Black employees have a "group"?<p>How many different race, culture, sexuality, and gender identity groups are there at Netflix? Is this internal corporate tribalism an American tech company thing?
American political correctness on full display.<p>Edit because I realize that I'm going to be super downvoted: I understand the history and the reasoning behind it, and I would agree with the termination as it is "American" common sense.
But coming from another country it is still strange to me that there are a couple of well defined words that are COMPLETELY forbidden, and that saying any of those words will immediately terminate any job, relation, everything that you worked for.
This is extraordinarily stupid. I fear people in the US are living under some form of mass psychosis about this topic.<p>I grew up in the south. It's been probably 30 years since I heard anyone use the dreaded word in the traditional derogatory and demeaning way. But, like every other American, I've heard it used thousands upon thousands of times in the new way, and I know exactly what it means: <i>"man", or sometimes just "person".</i> That's all it means. I wish that word had died long ago. But it's still here, for better or worse, and everyone knows it means man/person.<p>Did the people who supposedly took great offense at the use of this word take great offense at its usage by other people throughout daily life, including being used in probably thousands of programs on Netflix itself?
> For non-Black people, the word should not be spoken as there is almost no context in which it is appropriate or constructive (even when singing a song or reading a script)<p>That last part is pretty silly...
> <i>"Leaders have to be beyond reproach in the example we set and unfortunately I fell short of that standard "</i><p>vs.<p>> <i>"Thanks. Rise high, fall fast. All on a couple of words...."</i> [Later deleted]<p>Something tells me that even after being fired, he <i>still</i> doesn't get it.<p>For someone who leads a team specialized in communicating with the public, seems incredibly tone deaf.
> I was insensitive in speaking to my team about words that offend in comedy.<p>If you're offended about words that offend you may not want to work in an industry where they're discussed.
> It recounts an incident that occurred "several months ago" when Friedland used the N-word during a meeting with Netflix public relations staff during a discussion about "sensitive words." Several people told him they were offended by his use of the full word, according to Hastings's memo.<p><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/22/news/companies/netflix-spokesperson-n-word/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://money.cnn.com/2018/06/22/news/companies/netflix-spoke...</a><p>Sensitive, like the recent internal protests at Google, Amazon, and Microsoft over political matters.<p>* Amazon - <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/amazon-workers-tell-bezos-to-stop-selling-facial-recognition-to-police/" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/amazon-workers-t...</a><p>* Microsoft - <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/technology/tech-companies-immigration-border.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/technology/tech-companies...</a><p>* Google - <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-pentagon-project.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...</a><p>Due to this degree of social sensitivity I will never relocate to the west coast for employment.