Interesting column today from the La Presse journalist who initially broke the U of Ottawa n-word story.
https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/e...ous-encore.php
It involves a Quebec literature prof at McGill. She has her students read works both new and old.
In one of the works from the 1800s, there is a reference to French Canadian trappers who are working hard, "comme des nègres". This is an antiquated expression that I've heard many times before, even from family members. But they don't say that anymore. Ironically, a friend of mine who is African has picked it up and says it all the time, before bursting into laughs.
Anyway, several students flipped when they saw the word in the book, and one by one they all logged out of the class in protest.
The professor has not been disciplined but her boss told her to go through all of the books she wants to study line by line to find any offensive words. In addition to the n-word she also found many instances of the S-word, i.e. "sauvages" which is a racist antiquated term for Indigenous people.
She found that the vast majority of the works that are considered significant (even fairly recent ones) for this type of course contain at least one word that might be considered offensive to someone, somewhere.
Her boss has suggested she exempt her students for reading certain pages, or better still, simply not study any book that could contain an offensive word.
The students' federation would like which books are studied and which ones are banned in university classes put to a student committee that would be charged with making such determinations.