Day 965, February 2, 2023

Reflections on Language Wars

Upon reading Nicholas Kristof’s editorial and in conversation with an old mentor/friend:

I guess the writing teacher in me says, know your audience. In certain realms, Latinx is preferred. I first heard it used at a conference in a panel of radical Latinx grad student geographers (certainly not your typical blue-collar Latinos).  And I serve on the AAPIC (Asian American Pacific Islanders Commission), which recently appended its name to allow and encourage Pacific Islanders to feel included. 

I’ve ceased trying to sway the right. They are entitled to their own… rhetoric. I think I’ve tried to adapt to using language that demonstrates the world I want to live in as much as possible… but, I also try to understand who I am standing next to. That might be a survival tactic from when I went to college in TN, where I perhaps was too tolerant at times and could have spoken up more. 

I guess what I see the language suggestions pushing us to do is to think of people as individuals rather than The Koreans or The Aging Wannabe Rockstars. So, not as an absolute rule, but as a pause to think and be thoughtful. When I say the Koreans, do I really mean all Koreans? Or, do I mean a stereotype of Korean people. Maybe I do mean all Koreans, but maybe I don’t. 

I was talking with my son about this today in the car. I’ve become cynical, perhaps my Gen X roots are making themselves known again. Politics are broken and I don’t care much anymore about the left or right, the politicians  (all of them, haha) seem corrupt and self-serving. What I’d rather care about is what the person I am talking to would prefer to be called, and what kinds of language pushes me to think more broadly about others in ways I may not have before. 

I say all that, but I have also always prided myself about being able to relate to and talk with more regular blue-collar, of the earth people (as opposed to academics). Not  always successfully, but I try.  And that is part of knowing one’s audience, listening carefully, and when pushing boundaries, doing it gently to help bring people along rather than make them feel excluded. 

This makes me think of a class I was teaching/facilitating in the Leading for Change program, where probationers, judges, and probation officers were all in the same classroom. The discussion about Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (I think it was this book) had come to a point where I felt I had to gently bring up the concept of toxic masculinity. It was central to a character we were reading about and I didn't want the students to continue relishing in how the character was exhibiting all the stereotypes of male bravado without consequence. It was a careful and nuanced conversation that almost veered off the rails at points, but these men and women, who were not people familiar with or comfortable, at first, with the term toxic masculinity, began to understand what the language meant and how damaging male expectations and the performance of that stereotype can be. It was a nice moment to be a teacher on the Group W bench, as Arlo might say. 

I wonder if Kristof is having too much fun with the thoughts of word police run amok. Or if Santos et al. has infected his brain the same way as when you read that the economy is bad because Wall Street is down that you think the economy is bad on Main St., even if individual circumstances have not changed. 

Yes, I think some phrasing seems awkward and misguided, but people and organizations are trying something and maybe it doesn't work, or in a year's time we'll know better. But they are trying to create a different more inclusive reality. It is hard for me to chastise that, even if it is a bit unwieldy at times.

I have lots of mistakes and misguided attempts and assumptions in my past, and probably will make some in the future too. I hope that the right and left leave space for mistakes and learning. It is our mistakes that make us beautiful… and wretched.

The dome over the old Boston Children’s Hospital building.