<p>Racist wording from an Internet posting dating back to 2002 has put a Yale Law Journal symposium participant into some hot water, and even he is admitting it was wrong.</p>
<p>The controversy over the symposium speaker and contributor to the journal, Kiwi Camara, goes back to when he was a law student at Harvard, The New York Times reports. Camara posted notes from his first-year Harvard property-law class online. The notes referred to blacks in shorthand as "n--s." A handful of students complained about the posting, and the notes were taken down, but the issue still attracted attention on campus and in major newspapers.</p>
<p>Students and faulty members for weeks have been discussing Camara and his comments (registration required) in addition to whether he still should be allowed to participate in the symposium on executive power later this month.</p>
<p>Camara says he had "no good explanation" for why he used the derogatory language in his notes. "I'm not going to try to justify it," he says. "It's quite right it should be condemned."</p>
<p>Time yet again to warn students about being careful about what they put on the Net. Of course, it's also stupid to use racially offensive language anywhere.</p>
<p>Our internet generation certainly has to be a lot more careful in regards to forum and journal postings. People can get pretty damn resourceful and pick out something that was insignificant and make it controversial. </p>
<p>This Kiwi Camara shouldn't be banned from attending. Some people can get way too sensitive and immediately assume racism/discrimination. He's young and brilliant and deserves a pardon for something this insignificant.</p>
<p>Not sure if I agree that brilliance should be a "get out of jail free" card. Youth, yes - some slack. Brilliance - no! We should expect more out of above-average people, not less. A gifted mind is even less reason to act in that manner.</p>
<p>A gifted mind is even less reason to act in that manner.</p>
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<p>the act of writing? You mean "think in that manner". He reveals a dark simplicity of racial thinking that compels us to quarantine the entire brain until the diseased lobe can be isolated and corrected. If reorientation is not possible we will certainly not invite him to dinner or even sit at the table with such a monster. But he has proven himself an illuminating thinker in other matters. How can disasterous ignorance co-exist with such intelligence? How can good and evil inhabit one being so thoroughly? Where the hell are Christians when you need them? Probably eating donuts,...</p>
<p>What's most interesting is that Camara is from the Phillipines, so he is not a White American.</p>
<p>He posted his notes that used n--s as shorthand for African Americans while he was at Harvard. There was already a furor and protests, he apologized and removed the words, and I believe he paid the price when a job offer was withdrawn based on his racial slurs. </p>
<p>I fail to see why there is protest for his participation in the Yale Symposium when the Yale Law Journal already published his work last year after knowing about his website notes.</p>
<p>He made a mistake once, and it's over and done with. Should we burn him at the stake? Should we protest his every public appearance or employment?</p>
<p>If the earlier posters are correct--that this guy graduated Yale Law at 19, and posted the offending material as an undergrad--then they were the remarks of someone who was at most 16 years old. Sophistication and maturity in matters of the world always lag behind intellect. He's apologized and acknowledged that he had deserved rebuke. Is Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson permanently banned at Yale?</p>
<p>I am asian. Racial bias is the worst thing one can do. I do not know much about the author. So I not trying to defend the Yalie, whose act has hurt the symposium. These kind of people should be punished. But if someone offers a conservative views without the racil bias, they should be penalized.</p>
<p>Somehow I have started to believe that: it is more important that what a student feel than her/his accomplishments. Essays which show human emotion are considered best even though author may not have done anything major. If someone writes intellectual essays they are just plainly ignored because they do not support the left bias. </p>
<p>The human emotions are more important than accomplishments. I wonder are we going back to dark ages where nothing new got developed as we are starting to condemns the producers.</p>
<p>Wow!
Why this brilliant mind would such a stupid thing? Does not he know that color of skin has nothing to do with brilliance? People can do anything irrespective of the color of their skin or their religion or even sexual orientation. So many African American has contributed in scientific endeavors as well as social behavior. Martin Luther king policies resulted in open immigration for Asians. Asian people benefited from the struggle of African Americans as more were allowed to immigrate after 1970s.</p>
<p>I don't know--I see so many people willing to be horrible on the internet, acting in ways they would never behave if they had to own up to their words face-to-face. </p>
<p>There is a part of me that feels satisfaction in seeing someone having to be accountable (in real life) for what they post on the internet. It feel refreshing, I guess. </p>
<p>Once I get over that, I can think more about it from this young man's perspective and perhaps be more sympathetic.</p>
<p>To clear up some data, Kiwi was a Harvard Law first-year and 17 years old when he posted this information.</p>
<p>While he is of Asian descent, he grew up in Ohio and Hawaii, so it's not like colloquial American English is his second language.</p>
<p>He posted a "warning" at the beginning of the outline that "potentially offensive" racial shorthand was included, which of course made the problem worse, not better; he obviously had a good idea of what he was doing.</p>
<p>IMHO, it's a lesson not only to be careful about what you post online, but also what not to do with your brilliant kid. Genius or no genius, law school is not designed for high school age kids leaving home for the first time. Give the kid a chance to grow up before you send him out among the grownups.</p>
<p>Camara had written law-notes on a website, when he was attending Harvard Law School at age 17. In these notes, he referenced blacks as "n" .This happened in March 2002.</p>
<p>He has since graduated, was awarded a Fellowship at Stanford, worked as a law clerk in a Court, had a job-offer withdrawn because of that mistake, and he has apologized for his words without making any excuses for himself. He was also published in the Yale Law Journal, which stated that they would not let personal background or past behavior get in the way of academia.</p>
<p>I don't know if Camara, who is now 21, either practices racism nor spreads hate. Do we have any evidence to the contrary?</p>
<p>People do FAR WORSE CRIMES at 17, and their names are never revealed as they are underage.</p>
<p>A lot of brilliant people, great contributors to society, believe stupid things. Jefferson, despite the immorality of it which he at least at one time acknowledged, never freed his slaves. Woodrow Wilson, whom many (other than I) think was a great President and looked upon as brilliant at the time, was a virulent racist. Oliver Wendell Holmes believed in eugenics, writing approvingly of mandatory state sterilization of the mentally challenged. Teddy Roosevelt thought eugenics was a pretty good idea too.</p>
<p>This guy seems to be a very young kid, who posted some personal class notes on the law school's server that other students could access. Exchanging outlines in law school is a time-honored tradition. He wasn't just rambling on some blog for public consumption, or intentionally saying things just to be incendiary. He has apologized for the racial slurs, and his colleagues at Stanford where he's attending on a law and economics fellowship, apparently do not consider him a racist. </p>
<p>His field appears to be corporate governance and shareholder rights, not much of a platform from which to promote a racist agenda even if he had one. His scholarship in that field stands on its own merit and whatever his personal beliefs in other realms of life, it should stand or fall because of its merit or lack of merit.</p>
<p>This really seems like a pretty stupid controversy. He did something stupid when he was 19, was publicly embarassed and chastened, and there does not appear to have been a recurrence. The incident will doubtless be a late paragraph in any newspaper article written about him for the rest of his life. Give the guy a break and take him at his word that he's not a racist. For goodness sake, Sen. Byrd was a KKK Grand Kleagle or something like that. He recanted, and now the Democrats love the old guy.</p>
<p>I find it curious that we are willing to raise a ruckus about something someone- admittedly a very intelligent college student - wrote before he was an adult, but on another thread there is more of a "boys will be boys' mentality surrounding the arsons of nine Baptist churches in Alabama set by college students from a wealthy neighborhood in Birmingham.</p>
<p>Maybe those who can forgive the guy should forgive him. But there are those of us so messed up by this kind of thing, so harmed by the history behind it, that we suspect it exists around every corner, and in every person who is not black. I just will never expect a Holocaust survivor to be all chummy with a guy who shouts Heil Hitler! even if he recants and even if he was only 17 when he said it. The pain is just too great to ever allow extending trust to such a guy just because he says It was foolish and I cant defend it. That kind of apology doesnt really express remorse at all. It just says the guy now knows it is not politically feasible to say this kind of thing publicly and that he cant argue effectively for doing so. The KKKer Senator Byrd made the same kind of fake apology and democrats went ahead and accepted it. They may love the guy, but I have always distrusted him and always will, I dont care what he does as long as it falls short of genuine angst about hating other people.</p>
<p>There is just no way I would say awful stuff about a group of people, stuff that really fills them with pain and sorrow, and then after getting caught just say Oops. I shouldnt have said that. Yeah. We all make mistakes. And because of this I think I have a duty to try hard to forgive people. But if I hurt someone with my words, even if it was a misunderstanding, I am going to be really crushed by the idea that the guy is hurt. And I wont rest until I know the guy feels better. I have said hurtful things to others before, only realizing afterward just how bad it all was. You can bet when I figured it out, I laid myself before the person I hurt and begged him to set me free of it. I wanted that guy to see I didnt mean it and that I need to find some way to take it back! You know, it was like giving him a sword, kneeling before him and saying I deserve a beheading and if you want to do it, then it is entirely within your right. But I beg your mercy. I was wrong and I want to be right with you.</p>
<p>What this shows the guy is that I am hurt like he is and that only he can help me out of my problem. I am calling on him to forgive. This kind of thing works. I have used it with my wife, my kids and my neighbors. It is the kind of thing I expect from others who hurt people so deeply and want forgiveness. Even if after doing it forgiveness doesnt come, then I still feel good for having been earnest.</p>
<p>The problem with people who demand others forgive wrongs committed against someone else is they seem unable to identify with the wrong in an intense and visceral way. I can identify with people who are still hurt by this guy after all these years. So sad that people get a little brain on them, maybe they make a little money, and then walk around on the ground casually spreading pain and hurt to people not as smart and rich as they are. I wish I had their brains and power. Id work with all my heart to help people, to make them stronger and better.</p>
<p>what I don't understand is how language can be used by a group of people and it is totally accepted but if it is used by someone else it is "off with his head"
For example I just purchased the soundtrack of Hustle and Flow from which the Oscar winning song "It's hard out here for a pimp".
I saw the movie and liked it.
However several songs- if I can use such a broad term to describe them, were added to the sound track to fill it out.
One tune is titled P<strong><em>y N</em></strong>az- and that phrase is repeated over and over again.( and again)
I really do not understand why if it is so offensive, it makes up such a large part of the vocabulary of a certain part of the population.</p>