I'm 27 and this is appalling even to me. Conflating saying a word in reference, and using it as a pejorative is willful ignorance, I and my classmates were taught this explicitly in high school. I doubt this is a generational thing, unless it's a very recent phenomenon. I suspect it's more about gaining prestige and recognition in "outing" purported racists.
Rather than apologizing for doing something unintentionally, you take the position that you didn't know, so you can't be held accountable for it. How do you imagine they're going to respond?
And secondly, I just don't really believe you. I don't believe you would feel comfortable saying the n-word around several black people you don't know and using it generically without feel acutely aware that you've likely put yourself in a very socially uncomfortable situation.
Except this wasn't foreigners taking offense. It was other white Americans that took offense at its use. And it's a very inconsistent taboo, as well. The New York Times has used the word in its own pieces [1].
> And secondly, I just don't really believe you. I don't believe you would feel comfortable saying the n-word around several black people you don't know and using it generically without feel acutely aware that you've likely put yourself in a very socially uncomfortable situation.
What am I supposed to tell you other than that you're wrong? In my experience black people are fully aware of the distinction between mentioning and use of of the word, and aren't offended by the former. I'm no less comfortable than talking about the word "kike" in front of Jewish people, or "fag" in front of gay people, etc.
Notice how this kind of hysteria surrounding mentioning this slur even in reference is mostly raised by other white people, not black people. This kind of intense taboo is more than a little condescending. It seems to be implying that black people are incapable of distinguishing between use and mention of slurs, while most (all?) other groups can.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/us/politics/omarosa-donal...
The answer was no. A normal person might make this mistake. My point in the foreigner example is that when you make a mistake and upset people, you acknowledge the harm you've caused, and explain your good intentions. You don't justify your intentions and expect people to deal. As much as one's logical virtue may desire, that's just not how people work on any political spectrum. There's plenty of ways to piss off conservative folks with mere words.
If you do it unintentionally, which this guy did, you have ample room to recover, because, contrary to popular belief, even woke young white kids are reasonable people.
If you were at the grocery store with your spouse and pointed to a piece of produce you wanted, and an American teenager chimes in and says "don't point at things, it's offensive to X group." Said teenager isn't a member of X group. You see people repeatedly point at things and nobody takes offense. Do you just take the teen at face value and apologize? Or do you say "X people don't seem to be taking offense to pointing at things. And you're not even a member of X, so I'm not going refrain from pointing at things just because you say it's offensive". To give an apology is to admit wrongdoing and I see nothing wrong in pointing at things in America, hypothetical teenager's objections notwithstanding.
Likewise, McNeil did nothing wrong here. The fact that he might have kept his job if he apologized doesn't make this situation reasonable. The fact that people demanded an apology in the first place - for using a word the New York Times uses even in it's own reporting - is what makes this unreasonable. I'm not really disturbed by the reactions of the teenagers - they're still learning and in the process of becoming adults. I am, however, disturbed that a newspaper of record is applying a blatant double standard and terminated a long-time employee for something that the bulk of society and even the Times itself deems inoffensive.