Racism at work

[NCforobviousreasonsok]

I'm interested to know peoples take on this.
A colleague used an offensive word (go it letter beginning with a p) to describe a type of place. They seem somewhat remorseful but it's still wrong.

It's being dealt with formally, but I want to know how you would expect this to be dealt with at your workplace? It's upset a few people and rightly so - I'm just debating if it's a sackable offence or warning and if so, how severe?

I think you've totally missed the point that @masomenos was making!

Yeah it’s just a word when it’s not been used to offend and attack and “other” them personally.
Given it’s 2024 and not 1964 I think this should be a sackable offence in this day and age.

Bloody well should be. No excuse for it these days. We all know better.

As someone of South Asian heritage that simply isn't true. You do realise that most South Asians are not from Pakistan right?

This would be a sackable offence in my work

I think people just come out with this crap because they want to find a way of minimising or dismissing racist behaviours.

My DH is South Asian (not Pakistani) and has only used the term when reporting racist incidents to the police. My mixed DD has only ever used the term when reporting racist abuse in school and when calling out racism on social media. They certainly haven't "reclaimed" the word and they don't want it.

I once worked in a very diverse workplace which had a real problem with racism, partly because the main manager came from another English speaking country and wasn't fully familiar with all English slurs. I think a more junior manger had to explain various terms to them so they could address the problem. So I can believe that there is the occasional person who doesn't know which abbreviations are ok to use.

For the situation discussed a final written warning seems appropriate. If the person is racist then you can sack them next time. If the person isn't racist then they will pay more attention to what they're saying in the future.
Sacking people for a first offence might seem appealing, but I think would lead to tribunals and normally be hard to have enough evidence to actually sack someone so difficult to apply consistently.

No, I don't buy that excuse. We all have access to google. There aren't a great many words to avoid, and even fewer that are in routine usage in other English speaking countries. If you're smart enough to be a senior manager, you ought to be smart enough to not use racial slurs. You say there was a real problem with racism, so what was everyone else's excuse?

Everyone knows how the p word has been used to discriminate

No one needs educating on this they need to deal with the consequences when they choose to use a highly offensive racist word

Because the shortened term started to be used in a racist way. Racists use that word. Do you also feel this way about the shortening of Negro? Do you really not get this?

If it helps either of you at all, with your concerns based on a book you have probably never read

So true!

The key thing is he didnt call a person a "p". He called a shop a "p" shop. Had it been the former then a definite sacking.

no the key thing is the word was used

its very offensive and we all know this

It is amusing when racists fall over themselves to explain why the words they use are not racist. The term has been a racist phrase for decades.

I was born in the 70s and had it shouted at me even though I am not from Pakistan. It was racist then and it is racist now. You would have to be really really thick or racist to think it is ok to carry on using the term P shop.

If you want, you can start saying ‘corner shop’ or ‘local shop’. There are alternatives to ‘p shop’ if you and others are wondering what phrase to use.

Of course its offensive but HR will decide it's less offensive than calling a person that word. I reckon it'll be written warning, I hope the OP comes back with an update, though depending on the organisation it may take months to be resolved.

So what's your point, exactly?

Surely you're not saying that it's OK to use a racist slur to describe a shop owned by someone of a certain ethnicity (or at least, presumed to be of that ethnicity) as long as the word isn't used about the person themselves?

"started to be used in a racist way", yes, people made it a bad word. Like the n-word. Words are used in the wrong way and their meanings change as a result of ill-meaning people who want to sow division. That doesn't mean it is a bad word or should be a bad word. It's just a word. Like the short version of the country name Afghanistan. It was used an awful lot in the media in around 2016 and even before then, though, there was little to no outrage because if the media uses it, it must be okay, right? Another example: gay. Gay used to just mean 'happy'. Over the years it's now used to describe a man who is homosexual. Words involve, some people choose to get offended by their use, some people don't care and are aware that life is too short to get worked up over such silly nonsense.

Actions speak much, much louder. Once people realise this, there will be less anger in society.

What an absolute twat you are.

Oh dear.

@Simonjt

Of course I do . It's just a lot of white people used the word to describe Asians in general .

If someone called you a cunt at work would you be ok with it as it's just a word? What if a man at work referred to all his women as bitches? Do you think that the women in that workplace should just be ok with it as it's just a word?

All words meanings are made up by humans. It's not a unique trait to racial slurs. However, in order to function as a society we all need to work with agreed meanings otherwise we can't communicate.

Today, as things stand, both the N word and the P word are racist. Just because some people have reclaimed them or use them does not mean that they are not seen as offensive. Please do not use them.

How do you feel when you receive racist abuse? Which words have you experienced yourself?

I am pretty sure the n word and the p word have never existed outside their racist contexts. There wasn't an innocent prelapsarian world in which the n word or the p word meant something entirely free of abuse.