The pessimistic premise of the Word of the Week is that there is a giant posse of self-deputized language policers organizing themselves around the idea that by making moronic demands about how we should use language, they can fix the world. The optimistic premise is that these people can be ignored or told to get bent. Because, usually, language policing is really just some mediocrity’s power trip.
Certain weeks seem to emphasize the pessimistic premise over the optimistic one, though. This was one of them. In the New York Times, the screenwriter Walter Mosley recounts a crazy-making tale of being dressed down by human resources because he, a black guy, had told a true personal story in the writer’s room about being called the N-word. Somebody anonymously reported it. He was told he could write it in the future, but not say it, and that he couldn’t face his accuser to discuss the matter. Luckily, he was in a position to just throw up his hands and walk out on the job.
Recall a recent WOTW in which I wrote: “Philosophers and grammar nerds respect a key distinction between actually employing a word’s meaning and simply referring to it or saying its syllables — the ‘use/mention distinction.’”
The point is that it is only growing more important to simply ignore the demands of insane and linguistically barbaric people. Because it will get more insane. See, for example, a dictionary.com blog post this week on “redefining” the word “Black”:
“…we will be capitalizing Black throughout the entry when it is used in reference to people. Why capitalize Black in this context? It is considered a mark of respect, recognition, and pride. This is common practice for many other terms used to describe a culture or ethnicity. Not capitalizing Black in this context can be seen as dismissive, disrespectful, and dehumanizing.”
According to this allegedly authoritative reference, I have “dehumanized” Mosley above by describing him exactly as I would have last week, to no protest.
I’ve apparently committed many more wordcrimes in this column. What about the fact that I just used “moronic,” “crazy-making,” “idiotic,” “insane,” and “barbaric”? These were among the terms I saw being handcuffed and booked by the king of cretinous cops, David M. Perry, after Kamala Harris got in trouble for laughing at a supporter using the word “retarded” about President Trump. (The president of the United Snowflakes has, reportedly, also gotten angry at his erstwhile daughter-in-law Vanessa for calling him the same thing.)
Perry even got the legitimately famous broadcaster Soledad O’Brien to repent and march off to Problematic Prison for this sort of “othering” of the “neurodivergent,” to use some chic words that will almost certainly not be in use in two years.
This is the same mode of thinking which prevailed at Harvard University in 2015, when the title of house master fell out of use because of its association with slavery, though it comes from the Latin word for teacher: “magister”. (The dominant cognates of “dominus” for actual slave masters were not similarly canceled.)
If this all seems a bit arbitrary, that’s because it is. It’s always arbitrary when cops are allowed to enforce the law on their own judgment. Luckily, though, these are fake cops with fake power. If they come for you, resist arrest.
