And another one bites the dust.
This time, ‘cancel culture’ came for Mike Pesca, host of the podcast “The Gist,” and a journalist working for the left-wing website Slate.
Pesca, who is white, was suspended indefinitely for arguing in an internal Slack debate that the N-word should be acceptable within a certain context.
According to Defector Media, the staffers were debating the forced resignation of Don McNeil, a New York Times reporter who had repeated the word while discussing with a school group in 2019 whether it was appropriate to punish a student for using it in a social media video.
At one point in the Slate debate, Pesca wrote, “The question is: Is an out loud utterance of that word, in a work environment, fire-able, censurable, etc… Even as a point of clarification to a question exactly about the use of that word. I thought not necessarily. I agreed with John McWhorter. But that’s (notice the date) 2019 thinking. McNeil was originally disciplined in 2019. Just a little while later society seems to have rendered a different verdict.”
In that comment, Pesca was referring to an op-ed by McWhorter, a linguistics professor at Columbia who is black.
McWhorter had written about a white professor who had uttered the N-word in referring to how the black scholar and civil rights activist James Baldwin had used it in referring to himself. McWhorter noted that for years the unwritten social rule had evolved: “Whites are not only not supposed to level the word as a slur, but are also not supposed to even refer to it.” He added that if white liberals “embrace this hypersensitivity as a way of showing that they are good people, they make me feel exploited.”
Pesca later added, “I don’t think it’s proper to use it in casual conversation and I’m in no position to tell Black NY Times workers that they shouldn’t be worried it’s going to pop out of a colleague’s mouth at some point.”
“If you want my opinion it’s that there are some limited reasons why a non-African American journalist or professor to use the word when conveying a quote in the name of clarity or factualness […] But it’s not a comfortable point to even pursue right now. If I had the opposite opinion I know a hundred ways I could make the opinion I actually have seem horrible and racist, and you know what, maybe it is.”
Black Slate staffers complained. And then it came out that Pesca had made this argument in the past.
He was then suspended. It’s unclear when, or if, he’ll come back.
Pesca’s issue shows a growing problem for whites, including liberals, created by the woke police.
Pesca is the third not so obscure white person to be derailed by this issue. In addition to McNeil, country music star Morgan Wallen was banished by his record company and the industry’s hierarchy for uttering the word to a friend in a drunken stupor.
Last August, Texas Christian University football coach Gary Patterson hit the apology trail when he used the N-word.
In Patterson’s case, he said the N-word in objecting to it, telling a black player who had repeatedly said it that he didn’t want anyone using that word in any context. Despite that, some of his players still briefly walked.
In response, TCU center Kelton Hollins, who is black, tweeted: “Regardless of the context, the word is unacceptable to use but even more so in today’s climate. As a team, we will continue to hold coaches and everyone accountable especially as it pertains to the injustices of America.”
That is as it should be. But it will not be true until the woke recognize the obvious double standard.
Check out the ‘Cancel Corner‘, a new section launched where we report on the latest Cancel Cases and stories from around the globe.