07 September 2010

Why is it that racists can't spell?

Marieke Hardy, writes for ABC The Drum and is fairly insightful. Her piece 'How do you spell racist?' begins with the following
So the story goes like this. Victorian Labor MP Don Nardella recently received a letter from a very cross constituent who took him to task for not paying enough attention to his 'people' or parking in a no standing area or wearing the wrong tie or whatever. Contained within the presumably passionate missive was the accusation "You seem to not want to help anyone except the immagration people".

Mr Nardella, offended by both the implication and the spelling, penned the following reply: "My advice to you stands from my initial email reply. Learn how to spell 'immigration' before using the word again".
Of course, Hardy did not suggest that the correspondent might be racist but it was a good lead-in to the rest of her article citing other examples. Mr Nardella, responding to the Herald Sun newspaper, defended his response
"Obviously there's a slur there," he said.

"I felt pointing out her spelling mistake was the gentlest way ... to say that her comments were inappropriate."
Perhaps Mr Nardella should have been more blunt.

Back to Ms Hardy's article - read more here. She does have a point. More often than not, the most intolerant people, dare we say bigoted, are usually the least literate. Says a lot really.

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