Aibu to drop racist student

Why is this even a question?

Unless you are desperate for money? I cut racist people out of my life without a second thought (unless there was some important reason I could not).

If I did not need the money I would decline to have her as a client.

That is interesting. Bit like my gay colleague who would use the term gay boys or my disabled husband and his friend who would refer to themselves as lollipop men (men on sticks) which I thought was horrible but they'd just say well we are.

I think the age thing is also interesting, as if some of us grew up in an all white world. I lived in a poor inner city area basically we were all immigrants Irish, Indian, Caribbean, Turkish. The list goes on. In my road we had a Gurdwara, in walking distance Catholic Church, Church of England church as well as many other Christian denominations, an Orthodox Synagogue and a Mosque. The 50s were pretty multicultural where I was my black husband grew up in an area of the same city which was almost exclusively white. My mixed race kids grew up in a much less diverse place than I did.

The world is more complicated than we sometimes realise.

People in the UK used to use the term 'coloured'. Some still do sometimes because they think it is more polite than black. It doesn't suggest she is South African at all.

By being jailed for 'hurty words', I assume that you really mean being jailed for incitement to violence and murder, such as setting fire to hotels housing asylum seekers.

People in the UK also used to use the term 'coloureds' to describe people from a minority ethnic background/heritage. It was racist then and it's racist now.

Also, considering the history of apartheid and the fact that most white South Africans were racist, I'm not sure why you are using the fact that you think that OP's pupil is white South African as a 'get out of jail free' card.

Too true. In my 70s and found it offensive in so many ways.

I hate the use of people of colour. Smacks of slavery times when a black person who wasn't a slave was referred to as a free person of colour. I don't understand why that became the acceptable term.

I'm a pensioner and I used to work with colleagues who were the same age or older than me. We would never dream of using such awful terms to describe gay people and people of different nationalities/ethnicities. In addition to it being socially/morally unacceptable, we would have been disciplined and possibly lost our jobs for doing this. It isn't a generational thing and it's not acceptable for older people to come out with such unacceptable racist, xenophobic and homophobic views.

Do you know how they refer to themselves? I'm retired but worked with someone who referred to himself and his husband like that.

If you don't like my posts then don't read them.😃

a client who uses derogatory language including derogatory terms for people of her own heritage.

and what 'heritage' would that be? The OP hasn't said what "heritage" this pupil is.

If the courts are full of cases of people being sued for this perhaps you could point to just one?

What is the "this" you are talking about.

OP are you projecting your hatred of your mother onto your pupil?

@TempestTost, there is all sorts of interesting stuff about classical music tuition. Essentially it's dying out in the state educational system - which disadvantages anyone from a poorer background-while musicology, the academic study of the classical canon is under attack for being white, elitist etc. University music departments are being shut down and subsidies for opera and symphony orchestras are being cut. It is within this wider context that music teaching materials are being rebranded. 'We are an artform that is under threat, but we are hoping that if we change the artwork a bit that will save us.' The question of whether there's actually an increasing ethnic diversity of students leaning to play classical instruments is an interesting one. But I think a lot comes down to money both in terms of tuition and aso re career prospects.

Personally I’d just tell her that such terms are just not acceptable nowadays, you find them offensive, and you’re afraid you’ll have to discontinue her lessons unless she agrees to stop using them.

@TempestTost Great post. It does remind me of U and non U...eg saying serviette instead of napkin could betray your lower class origins. I know it was all a load of tosh but made a valid point about how some people are insecure about their language usage. Then it was a fear of seeming "common". Nowadays there is a fear of "causing offence" whether a word is actually offensive or not.

That's OK then.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Honestly you sound more ridiculous with every post. The OP does not need legal advice in order to drop a client who uses derogatory language including derogatory terms for people of her own heritage.

If the courts are full of cases of people being sued for this perhaps you could point to just one?

That's really not true. People lead different types of lives, end have different education, professional and family influences. So some learn more quickly then others because they're exposed to newer thinking.

My MIL was not remotely racist. Quite the opposite. But she said coloured because she'd been taught that it was the polite term. She lived in a pit village where she really didn't come across the same influences that my mum (a much less nice person) came across in her middle class environment and her career in education. My mum was probably the racist, she just knew not to use the words.

@Barrenfieldodducks
" It wasn't that long ago that I was told to say 'coloured people' instead of black etc in teacher training"
Well, it was quite a long time ago if you think about it, isn't it? Time does fly....

The OP hasn't really expanded on this, but it seems like a particular series, and her comment was that the covers now always seem to have non-white people of some sort on them.

The question to ask before saying "is that racist" is, is it true? Do they now have a lot of non-white people on them? More than they used to, or maybe more than is reflective of the general population?

Because if so, her comment is accurate, and saying it is racist to mention an accurate observation like that is something that is going to lead to bigger problems.

The appropriate response to a comment like that would be to take it at face value - "Yes, those books are published in XYZ place where there are many people of X background." "Yes, they seem to be trying to increase the diversity of the models, maybe to reflect population changes, what do you think?" "Yes, there is a large % of piano students these days who aren't ethnically English, isn't that interesting that many people from non-European cultures are learning these instruments while many families are getting away from having kids learn an instrument compared to the past."

Are the Germans and French minorities, in your opinion? The British, the English?

Some of these things are quite interesting in terms of a development of language element.

There are of course words for groups that are intended to be derogatory, some started that way and some became insults over time.

But words like "coloured" didn't really have that kind of natural evolution at all. It was never derogatory in its meaning. It was literally a matter of, a few people decided it was old fashioned, they wanted a new word that would have no baggage, and they told people to stop using the old word. It was very much based on theories about changing language to change attitudes. And in these cases, it was not picked up by everyone in the group, either - there were significant numbers of people who continued to use the old words for themselves without issue until that generation passed away.

It would be more accurate to say words like that were archaic, or old fashioned, rather than racist or derogatory. Except that wouldn't fit with the underlying purpose of those who push such changes, which seems to be to designate new in and out groups.

Words like "Frogs" or "Krauts" are similar in that they were not actually derogatory in themselves, any more than "limey" is. They were nicknames, typically used by the working classes. (They are also, now, somewhat old fashioned.) Using nicknames and substitution words was until fairly recently(and even now among certain groups, interestingly mainly racially united groups, my partner's wc Caribbean family has a ton of these kinds of terms) a significant component of wc language - including nicknames for individuals. In my father's generation for example, more than half of his friends were referred to by nicknames - some were related to something about the person, maybe an incident that had occured - others were standardized, for example guys with the last name Miller were always called Dusty in our area. You similarly see a lot of affectionate pet names among the wc people (luvie, duckie, etc)

Frankly, I think a lot of the inability to differentiate between racist language and the language traditions of differernt social classes comes down to class elitism, and it's the whole point of pushing ever-changing "correct" language and designating previously inoffensive language (or even correct in the case of coloured) - it's to be able to catch people out who can't keep up.

The people who get worked up about this stuff are typically the same people who are upset when some wc nurse calls them by a pet name when she gives them a shot, or who insist that someone shortening their child's name is deeply offensive. (Noteworthy that wc nicknames are not chosen or approved of by the person being named.) It comes from a middle class sensibility around language that will not in a million years be tolerant about language traditions of the working classes, because so much of being aspirationally middle class requires not being mistaken for that sort of person.

@EdithBond IMHO it’s always better to challenge racism,

There speaks a white person.