by David Hodges
August 12, 2013
Seattle city government is immediately banning certain words which are very common to the American lexicon. The source of ban came from an internal memo suggesting that “government workers no longer use terms like “citizen”, or ‘brown bag.”
PC Speech
Seattle’s Office for Civil Rights describes the aforementioned terms as “potentially offensive” and therefore other language should be used to describe “brown bag” lunches and “citizen” rights. It is not clear on how Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights decided that such terms were “offensive.” Further, it is not clear how the ban on the language will be enforced. Will workers be fired or thrown in jail?It is very kind of Elliott Bronstein, from the Office for Civil Rights, to tell us what words are appropriate to use. Bronstein suggests that the word “citizens” be replaced with the word “residents.” It is crystal clear that Bronstein is trying to disguise that fact that someone might actually
But don’t despair, Bronstein has an alternative. Rather than calling one’s impromptu sack lunch a” brown bag”, they could refer to it as “lunch and learn,” or “sack lunch.”be illegally living in the United States. Bronstein said that the term “brown bag” could actually be referring to one’s skin color in obvious reference to Latinos.
This is what Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights says you can have for lunch.
An Office of Civil Rights? Really?
Can anyone explain to me, why in the world would a city need an office for civil rights? Secondly, how can the good people of Seattle justify spending funds for this abject nonsense? The Seattle Office of Civil Rights has stated that the city serves all of the residents, not just the ones who are in the city/country legally.
And right on cue, the Office of Civil Rights pointed out that, you know, Seattle serves all residents, whether they are U.S. citizens or not – though officials did not say whether anyone bothered to ask the taxpayers of Seattle whether they truly want to “serve” those who are not in their city legally.
Banning Brown
I can’t help but wonder if the city is going to ban the use of the word brown in general? This makes me wonder if Seattle were to have an interruption of power delivery to its utility customers, what would they be permitted to call it? Certainly, we could no longer call the event a “brown out.” Additionally, what will Seattle now call a high pollution day, because they certainly can’t refer to the air pollution as a
Downtown Freddie Brown
“brown cloud.”
The former Seattle Supersonics NBA basketball team once had one of the best pure long distance jump shooters in the game. Unfortunately, Seattle fans used to refer to him as “Downtown” Freddie Brown. We certainly can’t talk about him anymore.
This practice could put UPS out of business in Seattle because if we “Let Brown Do It,” Bronstein would accuse people of exploiting immigrant labor.
What seems like a ridiculous policy by the city of Seattle, is actually very important. We live in country where administrative bureaucrats, not elected officials decide on public policy without any oversight.
Free Speech Cannot Be Abridged
What Elliott Bronstein does not realize is that speech cannot be banned in public settings merely because it creates an offensive or hostile environment (See DeJohn v. Temple University, 537 F.3d 301 (3d Cir. 2008) and Dambrot v. Central Michigan University,55 F.3d 1177 (6th Cir. 1995)) or “emotionally” harms a listener (see McCauley v. University of the Virgin Islands (3d Cir. 2010)), but let’s not confuse the city of Seattle with the facts.
In the finality of this case, this situation represents how far a group of administrative bureaucrats are willing to go to justify amnesty for illegal aliens.
Whether we are talking about amnesty for illegal aliens or the imposition of Sharia Law by our president, our courts and our legislatures in places like “Dearbornistan”, Michigan, or in Oklahoma, or even in Florida, American legal residents are not being allowed to have a voice in running their country and soon it is going to be illegal to write about these issues or speak of them in public.
Conclusion
