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
Senior Production Supervisor
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?
We can surveil you. We can also perhaps even influence you, change the way that the game interacts with you in a way that might kind of subconsciously impact your understanding of the world.
- Dr. Vinita Singh, associate professor of law, University of Minnesota
The Chinese authorities put my whole family in jail. My parents, my brothers and sisters, my wife, my three children. At that time, we used to say jail. Nobody used to say concentration camps. - Prime Minister Abdulahat Nur
“Sometimes the transplants weren't done in a sterile environment. They weren't done in a
hospital. They were done in an apartment somewhere. There are some very bad black
markets.” - Nobel Laureate economist Alvin Roth
