When every word uttered can be deemed offensive, small talk is doomed
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What is wrong with people these days? Why is everybody tripping over themselves to take offence? When did hypersensitivity become a lifestyle choice?
That’s what I might have said had I stood on the steps of the Old Bailey this week, channelling Elle Woods (yes, we are clearly related) in Legally Blonde after an employment tribunal ruled against a Japanese academic and in favour of small talk.
What’s that? Employment tribunals aren’t heard at the highest court in the land, but in drearily municipal buildings without Sicilian marble floors, allegorical paintings or even a single ornate mosaic arch between them? Oh, and also the Old Bailey is a criminal court and it’s not an offence to sue your bosses because a colleague mentioned a fondness for sushi?
Sushigate kicked off at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London when academic Claire Ozanne said to Japanese co-worker Nano Sato-Rossberg that she enjoyed eating sushi. Banal but hey, that’s chit-chat for you. Nothing to scare the horses. Just a remark to lubricate social interaction.
In the inimitable words of Giles Brandreth: “The purpose of small talk is not to be controversial, clever or even interesting. It’s simply to fill the silent void with a small gesture of common humanity. It’s a spoken smile, a verbal handshake.”
Uh-oh. Not in this instance. Cue a meltdown, with Sato-Rossberg interpreting the comment as racist, accusing Ozanne, who was her manager, of prejudice and bullying before demanding she be replaced due to her “racist microaggression”.
The university started an investigation into claims, during which time Sato-Rossberg was promoted. When it rejected the allegations last year, Sato-Rossberg sued Soas for race discrimination, harassment, victimisation and unfair treatment for whistleblowing.
You might even say (if you dared), she completely lost her tempura. At the ensuing tribunal Sato-Rossberg stated that Ozanne “would not have said to a German person, ‘I like sausage.’”
But it’s quite likely she would have. And here’s the rub; if she did, the German colleague would no doubt have been both pleased and interested to find out which sausages in particular she favoured; Berlin currywurst or Thuringer rostbratwurst? Blutwurst or weisswurst? Most pressing of all; with traditional mustard or moderniste ketchup?
I have a Masters in German. I can speak about art, politics, literature and that nation’s baffling hero worship of David Hasselhoff – but not from the get-go. Sausage is a much safer starting point for a conversation with strangers.
Food unites people Everywhere. Except Soas, self-evidently. Incidentally, the tribunal heard that Sato-Rossberg had told a different colleague: “people like me — a non-white female — must constantly consider the possibility that they are treated unfairly because of gender or ethnicity”.
In response, the judge ruled that Sato-Rossberg, now a professor, was “hypersensitive” and “predisposed” to finding fault in her colleague. Wisely, Ozanne has since moved to a different university; the silence in the canteen at Soas must be deafening.
The thing is, I don’t disagree that discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity happens and it most certainly should be called out. But it’s really not hard to differentiate between targeted abuse and trivial pleasantry.
Sato-Rossberg’s passive-aggressive paranoia hurts us all by fuelling the idea that certain topics are off limits and groups of people must be treated with deference for no good reason other than they might complain. All at the expense of small talk, that unseen glue that binds our patchwork nation together.
I’ve lost count of the number of times my children, aged 21 and 15, have yelled, ‘You can’t say that!” when I bring up subjects they consider to be taboo; race, religion, the proliferation of genders, stop and search. And this is before I’ve even expressed a view: “We know what you are going to say and you can’t.”
This censorship feels like an affront when I’m seated at my own kitchen table – but even I would concede none of these qualify as chit-chat. Frankly, the only good thing about climate change is that there’s plenty of weather to burble on about and, yes, I do realise I Can’t Say That.
All the same, the sands of what’s acceptable keep shifting and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought “there but for the grace, etc” when poor Lady Susan Hussey was all but defenestrated back in 2022 for repeatedly asking charity boss Ngozi Fulani where she really came from.
“I had on a red, gold and green headband, a cowrie shell necklace and the ankh (an ancient Egyptian symbol meaning “life” that some black people, and Rastafarians, wear in recognition of its sanctity). I think that’s what drew Lady Hussey,” she later told the media.
“Any time I go to these spaces, I must bring my history with me; I walk with my ancestors without apology. And that was what, I think, was under attack.”
Was it though? Or was it an octogenarian clumsily trying to make small talk? She clearly hadn’t received the woke “ask about heritage not birthplace” memo but to denounce her as some sort of villain who meted out “horrific abuse” was uncalled for.
Couldn’t Fulani have simply corrected her at the outset and used the opportunity to gently educate Lady Hussey about her use of language and indeed those ancestors?
Sadly, these days there is more mileage to be had from hurt feelings than adult discourse. Even where malice is not intentional, manufactured outrage is fast becoming the ugly look-at-me default reaction.
But playing the victim is a senseless game that hurts everyone involved; only small people make a big deal about small talk.
