“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me“.

I was taught that little mantra in my early years and I have stood by it ever since.  I have been called many names in my time, some of which may indeed have been classed as racist, or at the very least a slur on my nationality.  The only time I ever had concern for my safety was when I was picked on by bunch of drunken Unionists in Belfast during a politically sensitive period, but that’s a different story.

So what are words?  They are merely vibrations in the air or a combination of letters on the printed page.  The words in this brainfart use letters that are repeated many billions of times every day across the world and the only significance is the number and order of those letters, the context of the preceding words and the interpretation that the reader may put on them.  In themselves, words are harmless, unless of course they are deliberately used to incite violence in the mind of the reader.

I read a wee item today about Princeton University.  A row has apparently broken out over a professor using – as the item has it – “the N word”.  Princeton itself prefers to use the term “n****r”.  Now is there anyone in this class who is not aware by now that the word is “nigger”?  I guarantee that there isn’t.  Mind you it could have been “nutter” but we all know what we are talking about.  In either case it is a case of gross hypocrisy to try to obscure a word when the intended meaning of the word is perfectly obvious.

The wonderful irony in the Princeton case is that the bold Professor Rosen was teaching a class on “cultural freedoms and hate speech”.  What the fuck did the students expect?  Can you give a cookery class without mentioning any ingredients?  Can you teach a child about sex without mentioning genitalia?  But these pathetic little snowflakes have to complain because the word “nigger” was used, not once but three times!  Wow!

The school said it will continue “to look for ways to encourage discussions about free speech and inclusivity with the students in Professor Rosen’s class and the campus community more broadly”.

What is this fucking inclusivity shit?  Even my smell checker doesn’t know what it means!  It’s just one of those little snowflake words that the little darlings can hug to their chests and bandy about as if it means something vital to life itself.

Speaking on Monday night at a town hall meeting with students that had been scheduled before the controversy erupted, university president Christopher Eisgruber said he respected Rosen’s decision to use the word, citing the importance of having conversations where people feel “uncomfortable”.

He is spot on.  Fuck “uncomfortable”!  Anyone who feels uncomfortable with a word needs a massive dose of reality.  In fact anyone who talks about being uncomfortable, unacceptable or inclusivity should be marched straight off to be drafted into the army.  That’ll teach the little darlings what uncomfortable really means.

Carolyn Rouse, chairwoman of Princeton’s Anthropology Department, who is black, wrote a letter to the editor of the The Daily Princetonian defending Rosen’s use of the slur. She wrote that by the end of the semester, Rosen hoped his students would be able to argue why hate speech should or should not be protected using an argument other than “because it made me feel bad”.

It made them feel bad?  Oh the precious little diddums!  Run back to mammy before the Big Bad World gets you.

Let’s examine another word.

Contempt.