Discriminations

Robin Givhan, Washington Post style/fashion writer, has a column today about the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of crossing the linguistic minefield of race and gender without getting blown up. We simply lack an adequate vocabulary to discuss race, and are not in much better shape regarding gender.

Over the last few weeks of the presidential campaign, that yawning gap in our language skills has been on dazzling display. We've watched as those whose words have been vilified, parsed, misunderstood -- or perhaps understood all too well -- have scuffled to explain what they really meant or what they were trying to say before everything turned so ugly....

There's little room for inappropriate word choices when the specter of race is in the room. And yet, choosing poorly is virtually unavoidable. Words are constantly misinterpreted or taken out of context. Their meanings and impact shift depending on the speaker and the listener.

On the surface this is a sympathetic lament about our linguistic predicament. Just below the surface, however, in the not so deep regions literary scholars would call a “sub-text,” there is a not so sympathetic harsh command, directed primarily to whites and males: Watch your mouth! For example:

There are certainly linguistic traps when discussing gender. Never refer to a woman as shrill or hysterical. Even if she is being shrill or hysterical. Those words were regularly used to demean and belittle women. You will be given no benefit of the doubt. You will be labeled a patronizing chauvinist pig.

Race, of course, is even more charged.

But no other debate is as linguistically lawless as race. The definitions of words don’t matter as much as the perception of them or even the sound of them. Let us all recall the story of David Howard, the D.C. mayoral aide who in 1999 lamented his meager budget for constituent services by noting that he’d have to be “niggardly” in funding various projects. He ended up resigning because fellow employees were insulted. “Niggardly,” meaning miserly, sounded too much like a racial epithet, even though there was no linguistic connection.

Even attempts at flattery can take a wrong turn. Consider the comments of Sen. Joe Biden, who last year complimented Obama as “articulate and bright and clean and good-looking.” Almost before Biden could close his mouth, he was taken to task for his word choices. “Articulate”? How dare he! Didn’t he understand that the word carried with it the historical baggage of condescension and no small amount of paternalism?

Biden’s use of the word “clean” to describe Obama comes across as odd and awkward. But what would have been the right term to describe the Illinois senator’s style, which does not rise to the level of elegance but is several notches above ordinary? “Chic”? God, no. But even a poor word choice has to be better than silence.

We are so sensitive about racial and sexual language that Givhan despairs of our ability to criticize blacks and women without being labeled racists or sexists.

When it comes to race, language isn't a tool for dialogue, it's a minefield. And it makes one wonder: Is it possible to criticize Obama without someone somewhere finding racial overtones? Is it possible to hurl a plain, old-fashioned insult at him without being called a racist? Maybe not, admits West, an Obama supporter.

On the surface this article is articulate and bright, but it’s clear message is shrill and hysterical.

UPDATE [20 Jan.]

See Are Obama and Clinton Above Criticism II