Lecturers were forced to apologise after students attending a class on race complained about quotations from renowned black writers which included the word ‘negro’.
Undergraduates at the University of York said they had been left ‘distressed’ after an academic read out passages which included the word from works by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an African-American sociologist and civil rights activist, and Frantz Fanon, a French psychiatrist and anti-colonialist – both black academics.
‘Negro’ was the official and accepted term of self-identification for African-Americans in the early 20th Century, and Du Bois’s seminal study is called The Philadelphia Negro. The first chapter in Black Skin, White Masks, one of Fanon’s most important works, is entitled The Negro And Language.
Lecturers were forced to apologise after students attending a class on race complained about quotations from renowned black writers which included the word ‘negro’. An academic read out passages from works including one by William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, an African-American sociologist and civil rights activist
Despite the clear academic context in which the word was used, the students complained to Helen Smith, head of the English department.
In response, Ms Smith wrote a letter of apology saying that while the term was part of a quotation and was not used ‘offensively’, she recognised that reading it out had caused ‘considerable distress’.
‘I am extremely sorry that this happened, and I have written to all staff in the department to make it clear that they should not pronounce racial slurs as part of their teaching and that if those words appear in texts or on PowerPoint slides, they should be prefaced with an appropriate content warning,’ she wrote.
And in an email to lecturers, Ms Wood asked them to refrain from saying the word, written throughout the email as ‘n*gro’.
She suggested that if academics were going to quote racial words, they could be prefixed with the statement: ‘I am going to be using quotations which feature racial slurs, in an attempt to fully explore the topic, and in no way to condone the use of such words in other contexts by those who are not members of the specific racial groups who have chosen to reclaim these terms.’
The first chapter in Black Skin, White Masks, one of Frantz Fanon’s most important works, is entitled The Negro And Language
She went on to say that ‘this does not mean you can’t talk about the way in which the writers under discussion use the words in question’ and added that it was ‘important that we are able to discuss these issues frankly but sensitively’.
But academics last night said the case highlighted a dangerous move towards censorship and compared ‘snowflake’ students to employees of the Ministry of Truth in the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Professor Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University, said: ‘The obsession with the policing of language has become a caricature of itself. The word negro, which was used by pan-Africanists to refer to themselves, is now rebranded as a source of distress by students who do not have a clue about what racism means.’
Professor Dennis Hayes, director of Academics For Academic Freedom and a professor of education at Derby University, said: ‘These over-sensitive students are the products of a therapeutic education system that has taught them they must never feel offended or uncomfortable.
‘They come to university where they are expected to develop intellectually by discussing challenging ideas and they say they can’t cope.
A University of York (pictured) spokesman said: ‘It is really important to us that all students feel welcome and supported and we recognise that certain terms can be particularly upsetting, even in an academic context’
‘One wonders if they have ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which the employees of the Ministry of Truth put documents and photos they find unacceptable down “memory holes” to the incinerator to protect the current orthodoxy. Or perhaps they use the book as a manual?’
Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: ‘It comes to something when even black writers and anti-colonialists are being censored. York University should be providing these snowflake students with support and counselling to get over their phobias about language.’
A University of York spokesman said: ‘It is really important to us that all students feel welcome and supported and we recognise that certain terms can be particularly upsetting, even in an academic context.
‘The head of department apologised by email to students who were affected. Staff have not been instructed on what language to use, but have been asked to be sensitive when using academic texts that contain racial terms.
‘We are committed to ensuring that students continue to read and discuss a challenging and diverse range of literary and critical works and are fully able to understand and discuss their language, history and importance.’