What's in a word? Especially when that word carries with it the pain of hundreds of years of racism? This week we talk about how the controversy over the public use of the N-word plays out differently in French and English in this country.
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Sarah Lawrynuik
Senior Producer
Jonathan Goldsbie
News Editor
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
Kieran Oudshoorn
Managing Editor, Podcasts
Hosted by Jesse Brown
When a CBC host used the N-word in pre-production meetings, she was taken off the air. When the French arm of the public broadcaster, Radio-Canada, had a program just months later where the N-word was used four times in both languages, the broadcaster dismissed charges that there was anything wrong with the program. That is, until the CRTC stepped in and said an apology was in order.
Why two different responses at the same company in two languages? And why does the 1968 book by Pierre Vallières always seem to be at the heart of the controversy?
“My job is to smuggle black market babies out of Canada and into the US. I’ve been at it off and on for the past 5 years. Maybe there’s an easier way to make a bankroll, but I don’t know it.” - Eugene Moyneur (ex-wrestler, ex-bodybuilder, baby-smuggler)
“Elon flipped out. He saw Substack as sort of like the number one competitor to X at the time. He banned discussion of the word Substack. And to this day, there's a lot of people who when they want to talk about Substack on Twitter, they write like, S star star B, like, like we're Voldemort or something.” - Chris Best, Substack co-founder and CEO
“In an effort to put everything into question, we run the danger of losing any kind of firm footing on which to build a more just and equitable society. So the logical end game of a certain project of questioning is total bafflement or the destruction of everything.” - Professor Mark Kingwell
