The University of Michigan’s “Words Matter Task Force” (WMTF), created by the university’s Information & Technology Services (ITS) Department, has unilaterally decreed that it finds more than two dozen words and phrases offensive to people.
Included in the list of the offensive words are including “picnic,” “brown bag” and “blacklist,” among others.
“To effectively communicate with customers, it is important for ITS to evaluate the terms and language conventions that may hinder effective communication, harm morale, and deliberately or inadvertently exclude people from feeling accepted to foment a healthy and inclusive culture,” the pseudo task force said in a memo.
The WMTF said that acceptable alternatives to use are “gathering” instead of “picnic,” and “lunch and learn” instead of “brown bag.” The task force urges their woke sycophants to insist others alter their language to reflect their purview.
The “Words Matter Task Force” at the University of Michigan is busy expunging deeply offensive language like “brown bag,” “picnic,” and “long time, no see.” https://t.co/fDLv7gTVYO
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) December 24, 2020
The task force – which bestowed the authority to redefine words and phrases upon itself, ignorantly targeted the word “picnic” because of the false narrative bouncing around social media that its genesis is related to lynchings. Of course, this calls into question the legitimacy of any edict emanating from the task force.
The Daily Mail reported that “The word ‘picnic’ appears to be banned because of false suggestions on the internet that it originates from the racist, extrajudicial killings of African Americans…The word picnic actually comes from the 17th century French word ‘pique-nique,’ a term used to describe a social gathering in which attendees each contributed with a portion of food.”
The Reuters News Agency published an article in July of 2020 with the headline, Fact check: The word picnic does not originate from racist lynchings, in which they reported, “Images circulating on social media make the claim that the word ‘picnic’ originates from the racist, extrajudicial killings of African Americans. This claim is false.”
Among some of the other words included in the WMTF’s “Kristallnacht word burning” edict:
- “Dummy” which should be replaced by “sample”
- “Crippled” which should be replaced with “weakened”
- “Crazy” which should be replaced with “unthinkable”
The task force also declared “off the reservation” should be replaced with “outside the norms” or “rogue.”
The “rogue” task force also went after “low-hanging fruit.” The Oxford Dictionary defines the idea as “a thing or person that can be won, obtained, or persuaded with little effort.”
But an activist, “outside the norm” college professor labeled the term as racist. “For African-Americans, if you say ‘low-hanging fruit,’ we think lynching,” said Mae Hicks-Jones, an adjunct faculty member of Elgin Community College in Illinois.
Hicks-Jones, who apparently sees everything through a lens of racism, also said “grandfathered” is a racist term. She said the phrase is reminiscent of a “grandfather clause,” which, she insists has connections to “privileged White people’s” right to vote over that of Blacks during the Jim Crow South.