People who are working towards a more just society often find themselves scorned for asking others not to use certain words or phrases. Referring to a woman as a “girl,” for example, will cause the hackles to rise on a feminist. Calling mentally impaired persons “retarded” or referring to any old person as “Gramps” might evoke reminders that such labels are derogatory and reduce the person to a caricature.
These small reminders of the effect language can have on an individual’s dignity are scoffed at as political correctness, a policing of the way people speak. Consider, though, the difference between these two ways of using the language to report on the death of George Floyd: (1)Police were restraining a black man on suspicion of using counterfeit money when he died. (2)After being detained on suspicion of forgery, George Floyd, a Black man, was forced to the ground while a White policeman kept a knee on his neck until he died, while three other policemen watched, despite pleas from witnesses to stop.
We talk about the media’s responsibility to tell news stories without bias. It is just as important that we tell ourselves the stories of the day without using the language of White supremacy.
In Robin DiAngelo’s book, White Fragility, she noted that even in contemporary Young Adult literature that makes an effort to include a diversity of characters, stories are skewed towards the dominant White culture. Writers give names, physical features, and descriptors of personal traits – but no racial identity – to White people. Characters who are not White are always identified by their race: Asian, Black, Latinx (page 56). This grows out of the White authors’ own concept that anyone who is not white is “other.”
It is important to raise consciousness about racism and to dismantle the ways in which we reinforce white supremacy through language. I came across a story in my local newspaper this week that provided another example of this. Like towns everywhere, ours was gearing up for a Black Lives Matter solidarity vigil down Main Street. Social distancing required. Posters allowed; only quiet talking, please.
One of the organizers said, “It’s important for people to take social action even if they aren’t hurt by racism.” The assumption here is that it is possible for a White person to lose nothing of value through racism. If a person is White and lives outside of the cities, for example, then they have no direct connection to issues of racism.
And yet, even here in this farming community, racism is affecting who picks our crops, and who is now being barred by the federal government from picking our crops, and who lives in poverty while picking those crops. We are also a valley of prestigious colleges and a university, with a population steeped in liberalism. And yet, Black people with long-term positions at these colleges, people who are neighbors among us, are being stopped by police because they are Black.
In truth, we are losing everything that human beings of other races have to offer: their art, their literature, their dance, their creativity, their intellect, their personalities, their wisdom, their experiences. We are losing it because we are allowing so many people who are not White to be marginalized, to live in poverty, to attend sub-standard schools with primarily White teachers, to have to struggle beyond all measure to achieve decent work and housing and opportunity, to live oppressed by the White man’s world, to have their voices silenced (see DiAngleo, page (67- 69).
Words matter. It’s not just the way we say it or the words we choose. It’s the way our language is being filtered through a cultural framework of White supremacy. In order to alleviate some of the weight of racism, we have to understand how language reinforces White supremacy.
