Columnist Susan Snyder: Context gets lost in controversy

Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2000 | 9:12 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays in Accent. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

You have to wonder.

If Carlos Garcia stepped off of a cliff in broad daylight, how many school district employees would follow him?

The Clark County School District superintendent unintentionally stepped over the edge during a radio talk show in July when he used a six-letter racial epithet that begins with "n."

His attempt to eliminate age-old social stigma by using a loaded word in a new context was a colossal backfire. He used it while speaking to black students.

The guy hadn't been on the job two weeks and became the talk of the town. He was reprimanded in public. He apologized in public, and Clark County School Board members told him never to use the word again.

Yet here we are two months later with two teachers from different schools accused of using that very same word on two separate occasions.

A Charles I. West Middle School teacher was transferred and disciplined after a Sept. 6 classroom lesson in which she recited the derogatory version of "eenie meenie miney mo" that kids sang when she was growing up.

On Sept. 15 a parent accused a Sunrise Acres Elementary School teacher of using the term in reference to her child. That incident remains under investigation. No action has been taken.

Ironically, the second incident happened the day Garcia issued a "zero-tolerance" policy for racial epithets. They are "to be avoided at all times."

Words are offensive because of context, not because they exist. Zero-tolerance policies don't consider context. They don't answer hard questions. They ignore them.

These simple policies are hard to follow. Across the country, little kids have been suspended under zero-tolerance policies for having fingernail clippers in their backpacks, taking an aspirin or stealing an innocent kiss on the playground.

We are still blindly marching off the cliff. Instead of teaching how or why certain uses are offensive, we're going to pretend the words don't exist. We don't trust ourselves to figure it out.

Will such zero tolerance now lead to later bans on reading or discussing works by authors such as Mark Twain or Laura Ingalls Wilder?

Twain's use of a certain racial epithet has important historical context. Wilder's descriptions of her parents' conflicting attitudes toward American Indians illustrates the attitudes many pioneer families had.

Children need to learn there is more to language than what we say. There also is how we say it and to whom.

Academics aside, this debate is expensive. The district has spent more than $500,000 in one of several years-old discrimination lawsuits filed against the district assistant superintendent who investigates racial slur incidents. Employees say he has used them.

He denies the accusations. Garcia says they are "ridiculous." The fact we still bicker over this is ridiculous.

We need fewer zero-tolerance policies and more adults who think before they speak. We need to raise adults who can end these costly, hurtful debates.

How far do people have to fall before they figure it out?

You have to wonder.