The University of York apologises for saying 'negro' in lecture on civil rights hero's book

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.

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an African-American sociologist and civil rights activist    +4
Du Bois’s seminal study is called The Philadelphia Negro    +4
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.

...and comes up with this bizarre trigger warning for the future
'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'

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’.

SOURCE