Monkey Business as University Goes MAD!

January 22, 2021

Monkey Business as University Goes MAD!

Another day, another piece of "you couldn't make it up" Woke lunacy! An image of the three monkeys illustrating the proverbial 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' has been cancelled after academics at the University of York decided they are an oppressive racial stereotype.

Organisers of a forthcoming art history conference for the university have apologised for using a picture of the monkeys in promotional material and have pulled the image from their website to avoid offence.

'Upon reflection, we strongly believe that our first poster is not appropriate as its iconology promulgates a long-standing legacy of oppression and exploits racist stereotypes,' academics wrote in a statement seen by The Times.

It continued: 'We bring this to your attention so that we may be held accountable for our actions and in our privileges do and be better.'

A 'spokeswoman' for the University of York said academics were concerned the image could be insulting to ethnic minorities.

'The Japanese symbol of the three wise monkeys was used to represent a postgraduate conference about the sensory experiences of the body, and it also appeared on a document that asked for submission of research papers to the conference on a range of areas, one of which included papers that represented black, indigenous and people of colour,' she said.

'It was considered . . . that a monkey, which has been used in a derogatory way in the past, could cause offence in this context, despite this not being the intention of the organisers, so the image was removed.'

The image was used on a call for submissions page for the online conference Sensorial Fixations: Orality, Aurality , Opticality and Hapticity.

If they weren't so fixated on such pseudo-scientific drivel, the over-educated 'intellectuals' might be able to see that their reaching the conclusion that monkeys in any way refer to 'people of colour' is in itself deeply racist.

 

The origin of the Three Wise Monkeys 

The phrase 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' probably came to Japan from Buddhist legend in India and China in the 8th century.

The three wise monkeys are thought to have been used in Japan because of the similarity in Japanese of the negative suffix 'zaru' to 'saru', meaning monkey.

The proverb acts as a reminder not to be nosy or gossipy but is also used today to refer to someone who turns a blind eye to the immorality of an act in which they are involved.

 

 

 

 

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