Monthly Archives: June 2023

Racially discriminatory typography

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged racism typography writing on by

A disturbing number of major websites have adopted a double standard in typography. Skin-color terms are capitalized or not, based on what color is in question. I’ve seen sentences where the typographical standard is changed in mid-sentence, even in mid-phrase, capitalizing “Black” and putting “white” in lower case. I haven’t seen a consistent pattern in other color terms, such as “brown” (or is it “Brown”?).

Authors aren’t to blame for this, except when they’re running their own websites. The site sets the typographic standard (or lack of one), and the authors have to live with it or find other outlets.
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The thug’s veto in Lancaster, New Hampshire

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship libraries New Hampshire on by

The Weeks Memorial Library in Lancaster, a small town in northern New Hampshire, was going to put on a “drag queen story hour,” then it cancelled the event because of alleged threats of violence. A WMUR news article says,

Linda Hutchins, board chair of Weeks Memorial Library, said the library has a non-discrimination policy when it comes to renting out their room, but when they started receiving violent threats and word of multiple protests, safety became a top priority.

However, an NHPR news article makes it doubtful whether these threats were real:
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CUNY misrepresents American freedoms

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship education law on by

The bogus claim that there’s a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment of the US Constitution usually comes from a left-wing position, but anyone can use it. The Board of Trustees of the City University of New York claimed that the speech made by student Fatima Mousa Mohammed at the May 12 Law School commencement constituted “hate speech.” The statement asserts that “hate speech … should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation.” Presumably the university plans or has already engaged in some action penalizing the speaker, though I haven’t been able to find out what it did or is going to do.

This case is particularly interesting because it doesn’t follow the usual script of people holding a left-wing view claiming that positions they don’t like are unprotected “hate speech.” According to an article on FIRE’s website, Ms. Mohammed “accused Israel of ‘indiscriminately raining bullets and bombs’ on Palestinians, criticized CUNY for working with the ‘fascist’ New York City Police Department and military, and expressed disdain for ‘capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism.'” Those sound more like the positions of someone who’d fling “hate speech” accusations rather than being on the receiving end.
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