"Catch A █████ By The Toe" email? Dude, that still plays here in the South...

@dave While this semi-apology is a useful start, it doesn’t address the seriousness of this issue – nor does it address how this mistake was embedded in our country’s very painful history of anti-Black racism. Please know that you have Black customers (and probably even employees!) who were very disturbed by the email and are deserving of a more robust apology.

Based on many of the comments below (and in the other thread) I’m certain that some in the Meh community will think this comment is oversensitive and this whole thing is a non-event. It is very common in U.S. society to believe that racism is about intention and good guys vs. bad guys. This is false. Instead, complex systems of power and ideology are its main drivers – and many “good” people get caught up in doing harmful things. Semi-apologies like these that don’t address the problem of race reinforce such false notions, and I believe you guys can and should do better.

@liz

Meh’s email was, I believe, an entirely accidental error.

Your response is a little heavy-handed and lecture-y. Do we all need that?

OTOH, meh, (@dave?), you could do more. Like a follow-up acknowledgement and correction email? I don’t think there is a need to cover “all of history” here.

Yeah, I know things (accidental calls to terrible history, and the aftermath of terrible history, among other things) go deep, and cut deeply. And I know it all ain’t over yet, and there is much to be done. And I wanna see those things get done.

And I know all sorts of embedded consequences of the terrible history of racism need some air and examination. Hope that happens. I see it happening every day. I’m glad. I participate. I understand this is not about being a “snowflake” in the least.

Hope we are going in a better direction every damn day.

@liz And it may well be that no one at meh involved in this had any idea. Based on another thread, many never heard of this, including me. Of course I grew up in the north and only recently have lived in the south. Many things I had never heard about I learned about while living in MS. But not this.

@Kidsandliz

from the early 1900’s thru the 1950’s and some time after, the racist version was including in some films, plays, popular songs, including in the UK.

Kipling used the racist version somewhere or other in his writings.

I think, among the WWII generation, everyone world have known of the racist version.

I’m really glad so many younger people don’t even know it existed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe

@liz I’m fairly annoyed at your comment while simultaneously believing that what you are saying is exactly correct. It’d sure be nice if everyone being naively (or even just ignorantly) well-intentioned was good enough.

Good on ya.

(Though, what if most of the black people reading the email lived in the north and also had no idea that there was a potential racial implication, and the ones in the south took it as a hilarious mistake? Then a louder apology would be counterproductive…)

@liz sorry to get on my own soapbox a little bit… if you are encountering more resistance to your message than expected, I would suggest that it probably comes from the intense discomfort (even subconscious) in being told that, effectively, no matter what you do, your good intentions and efforts will only result in hurting more people — people you’d really rather be allied with. That’s a recipe for cognitive dissonance and dismissal.

It sounds to me like you’re going to continue speaking up about issues of this kind, which is good. For myself (being an oblivious, socially disconnected, well intentioned white man — I think, in this respect, I’m representative of a lot of people), I bet you’d be more persuasive with a little bit more of a positive spin — something like “and here’s how X behavior helps”. Any story that lets people feel a little bit good about their positive contribution can slip into their heads without all the resistance that comes from the implicit message “you’re bad and there’s nothing you can do about it”.

Then again, I am pretty oblivious. Not only did I not recognize the racist version of the rhyme, I didn’t recognize the tiger version.

It appears in my quest for clarity, I came off as being harsh and lecture-y. I’m sorry for this, and hope it’s not alienating people from my message or from reading the important conversations on this thread. These conversations are difficult, and it’s hard to strike a balance between helping people to feel okay and pushing them to do better. A sincere thank you to @f00l and @innocuousfarmer acknowledging my perspective in spite of my tone. The Meh community is clearly much better than the general population at respectfully discussing this issue, which I appreciate and that’s one of the main reasons I decided to comment here. I do sincerely apologize if people were annoyed, and will work to be more kind in my approach.

I have been a part of the Meh community since the beginning, and wrote my original post in the direction of @dave because I think Meh could better shape the tone of the conversation if they chose to directly acknowledging race. Even a simple statement like, “we didn’t mean to do this, but we recognize the terrible consequences and take full responsibility” would limit “they didn’t mean to” comments. Because people respect Meh more than the average company, your words have so much more value. Being authentic and responsible (e.g., “most of us hadn’t heard this and we were horrified…we will not use the eeny-meeny saying in any future write-ups, and will work to learn more about the history of race in America in our quest to do better”) could really shape the way users think. My main reason for posting the reply was to push Meh, not the community, but I’m glad community members are reading and carefully thinking about this.

@innocuousfarmer I, too, believe that another email would probably do more harm than good at this point — but the forums would be a really nice place to provide a more robust apology. I sent an email into Meh soon after I received the email and notably have still not received any response. I have two close friends who also sent emails, and who too still have not received responses. My husband has discouraged me from shopping here anymore, but I think a well-rounded apology in the forums would alleviate some of his irritation.

I can tell we all have different backgrounds and reference points which shaped our reads of this. I have no doubt that it was accidental on the part of Meh, but hope that they invest in making the future a better place. And to add to the personal experiences, I am from the midwest and definitely heard white kids use the n***** version in elementary school in the 1990s.

Thank you everyone for adding to this important conversation!

Adding a gif to lighten my response in what is an otherwise very heavy topic. Thanks for being such a positive community, and apologies for the long reply!

/giphy cute puppy

@liz
@UncleVinny

Thank you very much for saying what you said. I do appreciate it.

I grew up while in the South. And it was very bad manners to be “racist” in my world.

But, for all that, we understood little, at that time, in my world, and did less. We were blind and complacent.

Some still are. They are almost all good people. Very few true “perpetual jerks”.

And they are mostly not racist, as they understand racism. And some of them just don’t understand how much more there is to be done to kill off unconscious perceptions, before things are really healed and really fair and we are really at ease with each other.

So I hope I “get it”, a bit more each day. I hope everyone does.

I hope I can see your perspectives, at least to some degree. Let’s engage. Cool?

@InnocuousFarmer

It’d sure be nice if everyone being naively (or even just ignorantly) well-intentioned was good enough.

I believe I was trying to say that passive “good intentions” weren’t “good enough”.

If I didn’t convey that, I wrote poorly.

Apologies.

@liz

“most of us hadn’t heard this and we were horrified…we will not use the eeny-meeny saying in any future write-ups, and will work to learn more about the history of race in America in our quest to do better”

I’d personally like us to all just regularly sit down to dinner with each other.

Even that might mean a world of shifting prospectives toward us all being equally at home. And all having a variety of very close friends across racial and ethnic backgrounds.

I would like to think that if almost everyone had very close friends across racial and ethnic lines, that might change the world in a small but measurable way.

@f00l Good intentions not being enough was exactly the message I got from you (and @liz) – I was agreeing with you.

@liz I thought your message was clear and good, as far as it being a self-contained, kind of axiomatic, statement.

I’m hoping that the notion can be spread around the Internet a little bit that people who aren’t initiated – or who – realistically (for lack of social / cultural exposure), can’t be so initiated, need more hand holding to be as good as they could be – more of a “here’s why X, specifically, is a problem, and here’s how Y, specifically, helps.” Otherwise they just feel bad and can’t respond usefully, so they’ll tend to grasp for some way to feel better, which will tend to turn them away from the message entirely.

I love our forum community.

@liz

I sent an email into Meh soon after I received the email and notably
have still not received any response.

I want to address this one line - we’re a few days out in CS response time right now. There is no avoidance there, not our style.

@RiotDemon Because you’re a nice person who doesn’t automatically assume the worst?

@RiotDemon I had too google it to understand.

I got into trouble with an eenie-meenie caption YEARS ago - I had never heard the variant previously…

But what can you say - there are SO many variants of things, euphemisms… Best to assume the best, imho!

@aetris never heard the variant until today. I’m kinda bummed.

@RiotDemon Hopefully a good sign that this sort of thing is becoming less common-place.

@RiotDemon That’s what I grew up with. That saying, Brazil nuts, what blacks were called, other things, it’s all I knew…
I had to get out on my own to find out anything different. My schools, my neighborhood, everyone I knew were all white.
I got my first job at a loading dock in 1969 and there was a black guy working there. Actually getting to know him, he was a very nice person! WOW!

Anyway, I’m glad that someone mentioned the email. I had not even seen it yet, but it was a mistake for meh.
Sorry if I offended anyone…

@katylava

Did you confuse Meh with Woot again?

https://www.woot.com/offers/aurora-plush-28-super-trent-super

@mflassy Hey sometimes they acquire the same products.

@TheMonkeyKing Proud Southern here, have never said the word, never will and wouldn’t have ever even thought about that being part of that nursery rhyme (if that is what it is called) if you hadn’t of pointed it out, in fact it took me reading these comments to even figure out what was going on. Was it the fact that the word tiger, because I know that’s what they would use was covered that upset you or the use of the rhyme at all?

@mehbee I was always taught it was “tiger by the toe” The “n word” wasn’t ever used. I mean this is in my whole hometown neighborhood. With lots of kids using eeny meeny to pick teams or whatever.

@mehbee Same here, proud southerner! But I must be much older than you!
When my son was in fourth grade, I asked him if he had ever heard the word, wrote it down, he said no. I had to tell him what it was, so he would never say it.
We grew up with the verse as it is described.
I grew up in Tuscaloosa but moved to Selma, Al, when I began teaching. I had to reteach my students this verse, pretty much discouraged the use of it. I told them to not say it. Most all of my students were black and I love them and their families, I do not say that word, I consider them my people.
If that is what the version said, that is wrong. It has no place in this day.

@Calabama You’ll get no argument from me. It’s a mean,hateful word, to me, at least and I highly doubt it’s the version anyone at Meh thought of when it was used. If you go into the email, you’ll see the covered up word theme continued where different words have been used. This is always a discussion or debate that I am loathe to have in writing rather than face to face because tone is so important to such sensitive subjects. I know that there is so much meanness out there but I also think we’re so much quicker to take offense these days. To keep this on the lighter side since its too late/early for anything heavier, I can state from personal experience that Meh’s forum has been one of the most welcoming, inclusive communities that I’ve had the pleasure to be a part of and that includes any interaction I’ve had with the employees.

@mehbee Never said the word? Not even when signing along to Move Bitch by Ludacris?
Is there a bumper on yo’ ass?..

@TheMonkeyKing Wow! $79 for an IPA? What were they thinking?!?

@DrWorm thank you for acknowledging this.

@PurplePawprints 100% with you. I take it as a positive that most people didn’t even catch it until OP pointed it out (not that it shouldn’t be pointed out). And even then I was like… wait… the n word? I maybe, maaaaybe have heard of that version somewhere back in the dredges of my childhood from some racist, long-dead relative.
I’m happy to live in a time/place where it’s an obscure piece of trivia that that nursery rhyme existed.

@PurplePawprints Oh I definitely caught it. Immediately. But I was more of a 70s kid and an 80s teen.

@tsfisch I wasn’t born until 1980 so my nursery rhyme type days were fully in the 80s. But, that is also why I qualified my statement with the “similar life experiences” bit because I do understand that others were hearing it the original way during, and past, that time.

@cercopithecoid

and spread the word about another group of racists that inadvertently crawled out from under their rock.

I doubt they are racists. I think you’re being a little extreme. As discussed here, a lot of people never even heard about the other version besides tiger. Maybe you need to take a moment and reflect that not everyone grew up around racist people. Half of my family is from Georgia. My mom’s uncle owned a restaurant that dated back to the days where black people weren’t allowed to order except from the back door. I had never heard of the racist version even though I’ve heard plenty of other nasty racist things in my life. I seriously think it was an honest mistake.

@cercopithecoid If you didn’t get the email then you probably aren’t familiar with how they do the “teaser” emails. They don’t tell you want the daily deal is and they often black-out certain words that may give it away. In this case, they blacked-out the brand name of the item that was for sale. The email subject was “Catch a Thule by the toe”, but “Thule” was blacked-out in the email to avoid disclosing what the daily deal was. Here is the deal link: https://meh.com/forum/topics/thule-backpacks
The gist of the email and write-up was you had to choose between the three types of Thule backpacks that were being offered. The email subject suggested one way to do this was the eeny meeny miny moe" approach whereby you basically pick one at random. The person or persons responsible for the daily email likely had never heard the racist version of the rhyme and innocently blacked-out the brand name where some people might have previously heard a racist slur.
Naive? Sure. Racist? Hardly.

@RiotDemon Stating my impulse but saying I’m going to think about it, that’s extreme? Or was it hoping that meh could use this incident (inadvertent or not) to do a little thinking?

@medz Thanks for the clarification on how this incident probably came to be. I’m inclined to agree with you, that it was an innocent mistake. But I’m getting tired of people not educating themselves on the history of racism in our country. It’s a problem that we need to face together in order to solve and it’s my opinion that education is the best place to start.

@cercopithecoid We definitely are thinking through this, how it happened, how to stop it from happening again.

I’m working to get further ahead on our schedule, so we have more time to review our upcoming events. And I’m working with the writers to specifically review the email, and often create distinct email subject lines, so we think through exactly what is showing up where.

This is a case where the writer had never heard the racist version, but the failure is with me not reviewing and catching it before the event launched. It’s awful that people got that subject line in their inbox. I’m sorry that I failed here, and I’m working to make sure this does not happen again.

@cercopithecoid I specifically mentioned how you said they were racists crawling out from under a rock, and you wanted to spread the word. I was thinking that was extreme.

@RiotDemon Again, I was stating my impulse and how I felt. Read it again. But, I don’t feel I should have to defend my feelings of outrage over a racially insensitive action. I stated I was going to think about it, but it seems there’s no room for me, my feelings, or deliberations here, so goodbye.

@dave Thanks Dave. I appreciate your response.

@dave Thanks for your efforts. Researching every subject line and email body for anything that could possibly be perceived as a racist or otherwise offensive reference/connotation is a tall order. This will be more problematic as the younger generation (who may not have been exposed to nor have knowledge of racist rhetoric) takes over editing positions. I feel it’s a good thing that racist origins for phrases or rhymes like this are falling to obscurity. That tells me it’s becoming less commonplace.
I wonder if proofing software exists to cross-check against a database of potentially offensive words and phrases? If not, I want in on that action.

@cercopithecoid

Again, I was stating my impulse and how I felt. Read it again. But, I don’t feel I should have to defend my feelings of outrage over a racially insensitive action. I stated I was going to think about it, but it seems there’s no room for me, my feelings, or deliberations here, so goodbye.

Everything about your first response, and this one, seems overwrought.

Think it through, then write your thoughts, perhaps?

Right now you seem to be closing more doors than you are opening.

How does that fix anything?

@dave OK, there was a screw up. But guess what? We all screw up, and to think that you or the next person who double checks what is written will catch every mistake… nah, that’s not going to happen. However, I know you will keep on trying to do your best.

Anyway, I forgive you. After all, I’ve made a few mistakes myself.

@RiotDemon Here here!

@medz I don’t think it could ever keep up with what suddenly becomes offensive to some.

@UncleVinny

Some walls are very long walks.
Sigh.

“For the colonized person, objectivity is always directed against him.”

Franz Fanon, writer and psychiatrist, Algeria
The Wretched Of The Earth
1961

If you read him, know his history.