Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for the Week of July 13, 2020OT/LE

submitted by rwkastenBring on the dancing horses from self.CultureWarRoundup

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[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

Professor: Term ‘low-hanging fruit’ is a microaggression because it reminds blacks of lynching

The official definition of the term low-hanging fruit is “a thing or person that can be won, obtained, or persuaded with little effort,” according to the Oxford dictionary.

But according to one business professor, it’s a racial microaggression.

“For African-Americans, if you say ‘low-hanging fruit,’ we think lynching,” said Mae Hicks-Jones, an adjunct faculty member of Elgin Community College.

The scholar and consultant’s reasoning was that the term reminds her and other people of color of Billie Holiday’s song “Strange Fruit.” In the song, released in the 1950s, Holiday compares the bodies of lynching victims to fruit hanging from trees.

Hicks-Jones made the comments during an online discussion hosted Thursday by the college’s Multicultural and Global Initiatives Committee, or MAGIC.

Hicks-Jones, along with other members of the Elgin community, shared “examples of implicit biases and microaggressions, which happen in our communities,” the college’s Facebook event page states.

The title of the event was “Black Lives Matter: Being ‘Not Racist’ is NOT enough!”

Also objectionable to Hicks-Jones was the phrase “grandfathered in,” because she said it is reminiscent of a grandfather clause, which privileged white people’s right to vote over that of black people during the Jim Crow South.

(Reposting since we moved subs)

[–]the_nybbler 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Low-hanging fruit" immediately brings to mind both the story of Tantalus and the Aesop about the fox and the grapes (both of which involved the opposite). Investopedia claims

Phrases such as "fruit low hung" and "fruit hanging low" has been part of the English language since the 17th century, but the exact phrase "low-hanging fruit" likely first appeared in print in a 1968 article in the Guardian newspaper, and the phrase referenced something easily attainable.

Certainly it has nothing to do with "strange fruit".