Idk man, he’s a public figure. Like, would we be this mad if Kamala accidentally leaked her phone’s contact list (names only, no numbers)?

And to be clear, it’d be another thing entirely if he had, like, secret government sources in his contact list or something. But I don’t see anyone saying that as far as I can tell. It’s just his personal friends and contacts.

Nah, Venmo contacts are often based off of your phone contacts. So that’s probably just a list of people he has saved to his phone (who also have Venmo).

And even if you did have to pay someone for them to show up, it still doesn’t seem like much of a scandal. It’s not like someone in the contact list was “drug dealer” or something. Who cares if he venmo’d a coworker $20 for lunch?

Idk man. Like, leaking your phone’s contact list probably isn’t the best thing ever, but it’s hardly a huge deal imo.

Fair, but I didn’t see any contacts that were terribly surprising or concerning.

I mean, I think most people on Venmo have it set this way. It’s the default. I wouldn’t call it inept.

It’s not privacy focused for sure, but then, using social media in any capacity isn’t. I’m unconvinced this is crazy worse.

Sure, but that’s not a scandal. You could call Trump’s Twitter follower list the same thing.

It says none of their actual transactions was visible, just their friends lists. And Venmo has a long history of trying to be the “social media” of paying people.

So, like, I’m no fan of the guy, but ik confused why this is news? I can probably see his followed people on Twitter too, but that’s not a scandal. If there aren’t any sketchy payments or anything, what’s the issue?

I will say, the longer I look at that, the less confident I am that there is any difference at all, lol.

Are you saying this didn’t happen?

I mean, I agree that it’s unaffordable, and that building up is a solution to that, but homelessness is rarely caused by housing costs being too high.

Most people who can’t afford the rising cost of living in an area either add roommates or move somewhere cheaper.

To end up in a tent in an encampment is almost always correlated with drug use or mental illness.

Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t take care of those people. We should. But lack of housing is almost never the limiting factor there.

I really, genuinely don’t. You may not believe it, but those feel equally charged to me.

But I think that’s at the crux of our disagreement. My lived experience is that that phrase is uncharged, and your lived experience is that it’s terribly charged. This is probably due to regional or cultural differences, and honestly, that’s fine.

We could debate who’s lived experience is the more generalized one. Who is more representative of the average American. But honestly, I don’t know that it matters.

And even if you found out that 95% of people think it’s uncharged (which I’m not saying is the case), it still wouldn’t make it feel any different for you I’m sure, as again, in your lived experience that phrase is tantamount to a slur.

But all that said, I appreciate the discussion about it. It’s always interesting to come across these things that, due to fluctuations in region or age or whatever, both seem so obviously true to each side, while being so polarizing.

And I know I see you around here a lot, and I generally agree with you on stuff. So like, I know you’re not an unreasonable person or whatever. I respect your opinion on the issue even. We just disagree this time.

I’ll do that as soon as you find me one example of a teacher saying "hey there buster brown, why don’t you sit down!”

You probably can’t, because it’s not news worthy, as this wouldn’t be 99.9% of the time. The only reason this is, is because the kid in question was one, Arab, and two, offended. If either hadn’t been true, none of us would have ever heard about it.

But I recall people using that phrase in highschool. I remember teachers using it. That was back in the Bush era, to be fair, but it was pretty normative. We didn’t really have any Arab population, so not much chance of anyone being offended though.

The issue with your counter example is that there’s plenty of times a teacher might use the word terrorist in a classroom. Any history lesson covering the past half century for example. There are precious few times a teacher should be actively swearing in a classroom, in any context.

But if it’s a power dynamic thing, I’d be equally fine saying “I don’t negotiate with terrorists” to a subordinate at work if they were being a particular kind of dick, same as I would with a buddy. Because it’s a normal phrase people say.

Dang, the closest I could find in the NYC white pages was “Terrarese,” which like, sounds pretty close, but not quite there, lol. Some people’s parents give out some wild names, lol. I wouldn’t be shocked if there was a Terrorist Jones out there somewhere. But you’re right, that was largely tongue-in-cheek (which isn’t a racial epithet against people with big cheeks, and I’m sorry if you happen to have big cheeks and feel insulted).

But, to answer your question, no. Again, if the kid was like, “Mrs Marples, can I change seats,” and the teacher responded with, “screw you, you little terrorist,” then that’s clearly wildly out of line. But there are reasonable times to use the phrase “I don’t negotiate with terrorists” that aren’t racially charged. If I say that to a buddy (ethnically white American) who’s being a dick, I’m not some raging racist who hates Arab people. I used a reasonably common phrase, in the zeitgeist, at a time where it made sense to do so. And I’m not saying that’s definitely what happened here. I’m saying it could be the case, and I’m willing to give reasonable doubt until I see an article that’s more than 3 sentences long with less detail than was in the headline.

I mean, clearly it’s sometimes okay to call a kid a terrorist.

What if a highschool decides to do a stage production of The Hurt Locker, and one kid has to play a terrorist. Can the drama teacher call them “the terrorist” when blocking a scene?

What if a kid brings a gun to school and says, “I’m holding this school hostage as an act of terrorism!” Could a teacher refer to them as a terrorist then?

What if a kid’s first name is terrorist? Terrorist Jones they call him. Is a teacher not allowed to refer to them by their name?

It’s clearly okay to sometimes call a kid a terrorist. We’re just quibbling over when it’s okay to call a kid a terrorist.

In the scenario I outlined, it’s not an insult. It’s just a common turn of phrase.

For it to even possibly be an insult the teacher would have to know the students ethnic background. It wouldn’t be reasonable to construe it as an insult if the student wasn’t Arab. And a person’s ethnic background isn’t always apparent.

No one is arguing that it’s okay for teachers to insult students. Literally no one has taken that position in this conversation. People have asserted that point many times, but you keep circling back to it, so I’ll emphasize. Of course it’s not okay for teachers to insult students. Literally no one is arguing that, and you’re not listening.

I’m just saying a lot of common words and phrases can be loaded in certain circumstances. If I tell a child that’s hoarding toys, “now now, let’s not be greedy, we need to share with our friends, okay,” that’s fine. If it turns out that kid is Jewish though, it could taken very poorly.

Hell, a kid could tell me about their weekend plans, and I could say, “wow, that’s crazy,” not knowing their mom is in an institution, and the headline could read, “teacher tells student they are mentally unwell, just like their institutionalized mother.” Expecting someone to perfectly avoid all potentially charged language is impossible.

And I’m not saying that the person in the article is blameless. I’m saying the article has very very little in the way of detail, and I’m leary of joining a pitchfork weilding mob over what could have been a simple, though deeply unfortunate, choice of words.

I kinda doubt many seven year olds are asking for a seat change?

But, so long as we’re making up scenarios that support our side of the argument, what if it was an otherwise white presenting student, who’s ethnic background the teacher didn’t know, who told the teacher, “change my seat or I’ll beat your ass”?

Without full context, it’s hard to say how deplorable the usage of the phrase truly was. It could have been horrible and racist, sure. I’m not arguing that it couldn’t, or even that it wasn’t. I’m just arguing that it also could also have been a completely normal and understandable turn of phrase that was not intended to be offensive, but unfortunately was.

Maybe this is purely cultural/regional then. I grew up in an area without a large Muslim population. Perhaps the phrase was used pejoratively elsewhere.

Have you ever heard that phrase used as an insult? I’ve only ever heard it used as a joking way to say “no.” Especially in cases where the person is being bullheaded about something.

I’ve literally never heard that phrase used in a pejorative way.

I mean, I come from a place that that’s a normal thing people say. And I’d think I’m as likely to say it to a child as “I’ll be back,” or “clever girl,” or “what we have here is a failure to communicate,” or any number of other referential phrases that a child is unlikely to understand the reference to.

But maybe you’re right it’s an age/generational thing. It’s definitely a phrase still in the zeitgeist of people my age, but maybe less so in a younger demographic? Maybe that’s why there’s a skew in the comments, where some of us see it as a phrase as common and normal as “we’re gonna need a bigger boat,” and some think it’s super out of left field and weird.

But the child not getting the reference is immaterial. Part of learning language is learning what phrases are in the zeitgeist. It’s not weird for me to use any of the above phrases with a child, even if they haven’t seen any of the things they’re from.

I think calling a black child a monkey without that being part of an established pattern or without reason would be racist, sure.

But if a whole kindergarten class was acting crazy, and a teacher said they were acting like moneys, and that class happened to have a black child in it, I wouldn’t think they were racist for calling that black child a monkey.

And if a news story ran that had the headline, “racist teacher calls black child a monkey,” and those were the facts presented, I’d call it rage bait.

So the question of whether this child was singled out and called a terrorist with racial intent, or we just have a teacher using a normal phrase with no racial intent seems a relevant point.