It was cold in the basement where he worked. Had dressed in shirtsleeves but underestimated the dampness. He thought: "A pullover!" Going into a domestic storage bin he found a perfectly suitable sweatshirt: handsome large and warm. But for one thing he hesitated.
Across the front was the word. The ticket to censure for certain. The E word.
The E word is out of date.
However in a cold country like Canada a fellow is going to need something warm to put on occasionally. So the E word sweatshirt it will be.
The choice is to die of censure or from exposure to cold.
Good thing for you that this isn’t facebook or twitter. You would be banned, shamed, cancelled, fired and have a “peace riot” on your front lawn.
If the name offends a culture, it should be banned. If your sweater offends anyone who is not of that culture, it doesn’t really matter.
If I have offended anyone, I apologize.
Wear the sweater (maybe not near any campus) and stay warm.
In this situation, there is a choice that is between freezing, and quite possibly one's respiratory health, and the feelings of some people. Now if it were nice weather, this is a different choice, but it's not in this example.
When one is pressed to make such a choice, I will always choose the comfort and health of humanity over the feelings of onlookers, who often also are otherwise very comfortable and not those directly affected, so long as violence is not directly at hand or imminently advocated.
But this is usually not the choice at hand. Stay warm and wear the pullover of course but bring another one next time maybe.
Good point - by the inspiring example down here, I’m rather sure all those fans in Washington did not throw out all that ugly gear they had for years. And I am confident that owner Dan Snyder who cashed in all those checks from the team, which for many years has been rumoured to be the most profitable (note the Cowboys are the most valuable team and probably gross the most), sure was not giving rebates or buying any gear back with proceeds to charity.