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In Seattle, the terms 'citizen' and 'brown bag' are now offensive
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| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Edited | Scott³ Aug 02, 2013 04:19pm |
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| Category | News |
| Author | Kristen Butler |
| News Date | Friday, August 2, 2013 10:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | "Public information officers for the City of Seattle have been advised to stop using the terms "citizen" and "brown bag" -- as in brown-bag lunch -- saying they could be offensive to some city residents.
Elliott Bronstein of the Office for Civil Rights circulated the memo encouraging government employees to avoid using the potentially offensive terms.
Instead of "brown-bag lunch," he suggests "sack lunch" or, for some inexplicable reason "lunch-and-learn," as in, "do you want to go out with us, or are you lunch-and-learning it?"
He defended the recommendation on the radio, saying the term "brown bag" has a sordid history.
"For a lot of particularly African American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home." |
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