It's not every day that something on the city's website is unprintable here on MPLS. Today is one of those days.
Minneapolis is currently in the process of drafting a new harassment and discrimination policy. Among other things, the new policy will "[eliminate] the sometimes controversial list of specific offensive racial and ethnic slurs," according to a staff report.
Intrigued, we pulled up the current "Respect in the Workplace" policy. Sure enough, page 4 lists a number of "derogatory terms" that are off-limits in City Hall. Most of them can't be repeated on this website.
Some of the terms are also a bit outdated -- that is, if they were ever slurs to begin with. Two of the head scratchers: "gray lady" and "prehistoric relic."
Then there's the word "mokey," which is either "monkey" misspelled or a reference to a character from Fraggle Rock (pictured above).
The proposed new policy and procedures have much broader language that prohibits verbal harassment of protected classes.
