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[bryant]

The other day, I was debating the legality of entering my apartment without prior notice with my landlord when my neighbor got home. My neighbor is French; I don't know the first thing about him other than that. He's quiet. My landlord gave up on our conversation, and started haranguing my neighbor about speaking French. "Don't go speaking French around here! I don't like what France has been doing!"

I wimped out; I didn't tell him that my neighbor had every right to speak French if he wanted.

I live about a mile and a half from Harvard; about the same from Tufts, and maybe three miles from MIT. It doesn't get much more liberal college town than this. Still, my landlord was yelling at my neighbor, because he is French.

Comments

[carneggy.livejournal.com]

You should ask your landlord if he's going to stop eating French Fries as a result.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I had to wimp out on a similar point back when I lived in Northfield, MN--a college town in a liberal state--when my boss made a pretty strongly anti-gay comment. The problem being, he was, well, my boss. Similarly with landlords; these people have, frankly, power over you, and principles are hard to stand by when they mean threatening one's job/housing. Strong principles, yes, but correcting someone's bigoted remark is such a smaller point...it's a shame, but it is true.

So. Yeah. Sigh.