speech and respect - College of Social Sciences and International ...

Taking Sides
will hear an appeal in Robinson v. Jacksonville Shipyards. New York
Times A11 (January 23, 1991); Los Angeles Times A3 (September 24,
1991). England has no reservations about protecting workers from abuse.
Guardian 2 (November 14, 1991) (£20,000 to black Metropolitan policeman
abused by other police); 193 Searchlight 6 (July 1991) (£2000 to
construction worker whose boss called him "nigger," "black bastard"
and "mongrel" merely to make him work harder).
25
Bethnal Green (1978: 88).
26
Tompson (1988: 125) (Newham Council); 194 Searchlight 6 (August
1991); 191 Searchlight 13 (May 1991) (Edinburgh); 194 Searchlight 6
(June 1991) CRE (1987: 27); FitzGerald (1989) (Hackney).
27
192 Searchlight 6 (June 1991).
28
Abel (1982). Others remain sceptical about the possibility of informalism
in western societies. Fitzpatrick (1992).
29
Feeley (1979), paraphrasing Marshall McLuhan.
30
Matsuda (1987). For a feminist critique of tort damages, see Bender
(1990a; 1990b).
Punishment can nullify the status degradation of apology by evoking
sympathy for the offender. After a New York Mets baseball player was
found nude in a van with a joint and a woman not his wife he declared at
a press conference: "I wish to apologize publicly to my wife and
children, the Mets' ownership and management, my teammates, to all
Met fans and to baseball in general for my behavior in St. Petersburg."
But when the Mets chairman denounced the behaviour as "bad for
baseball's image" and fined the player $2000, audience outrage turned
to sympathy. The spokesman for the Japanese American Citizens League
sought to prevent collective American guilt from turning into resentment
of the $20,000 compensation paid by the United States to every surviving
internee. Money showed that the apology was "sincere," although it
"could not begin to compensate a person for his or her lost freedom,
property, livelihood or the stigma of disloyalty." I have taken this and all
other otherwise unattributed examples of apology from Tavuchis (1991).
31
Cf. Habermas (1984).
32
Scott & Lyman (1968); Blumstein (1974).
33
Garfinkel (1956); Blum-Kulka et al. (1989); Schlenker & Darby (1981);
Darby & Schlenker (1982); Coulmas (1981).
Rep. Patricia Schroeder (D-Colo) has been a harsh critic of sexual
harassment in the military, most recently the Navy's 1991 Tailhook
Association convention, where many women were manhandled. When a
fighter-pilot party at the Miramar Naval Air Station unfurled a lewd sign
imputing that she engaged in oral sex, Admiral Frank B. Kelso 2d, Chief of
Naval Operations, visited Schroeder's office to apologise even before she
heard of the incident. Vice Admiral Edwin Kohn Jr (Commander of Naval
Air Force in the Pacific) echoed the apology, saying he was "humiliated,
disgusted, frustrated." "We are going to change ... a decaying culture
that has proven more and more unproductive and unworthy." Los
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