From: aburt@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (Andrew Burt)
Subject: peculiar language
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 92 03:06:54 GMT

Let me preface this by saying I do *NOT* want to start a flame war.  I am
only asking this to get feedback on what seems to me a "simple" remedy
to a long-standing human problem, one that I haven't heard of before but
seems "obvious" to me.  Let me further say that I personally try not to
judge any human on any basis other than how they act toward me (in other
words, I don't believe I judge people based on their physical characterstics;
and if it were drawn to my attention that I ever did, I would try not to
again.)  I know how sensitive this subject I'm about to broach can be,
so I'm trying to avoid anyone saying I'm a horrible evil person in case
I say something I don't realize is uncool.  I'm also posting only to this
group because even though this topic applies to all humans, the example
that came up recently which got me thinking about it involves someone who
I know is "African American".  I wanted to limit this to one newsgroup to avoid
posting to every group on the net which might be relevant to save
network traffic, etc. -- it could go in just about any group.  I
personally take it for granted that all humans are equal.  My motives
are pure here...

Ok, here goes.

To summarize, my basic point below is:  Do we and the media need to
pay significantly more attention to our language in order to eliminate
irrelevant and harmful categorization of people by physical characteristics?

Details:
I was recently disturbed by a headline that Denver's "biggest" newspaper,
the Rocky Mountain News, ran on the front page.  It had a picture of a
newly appointed judge to Colorado's Supreme Court, namely DU law professor
Gregory Scott, and his family.  Above the picture in large print it said
"Black named to high court".

My instant thought was that this sounded like language that only serves
to increase an existing tension among people, namely people who happen
to have different skin color.

This is where I'd like some opinions.  My feeling is skin color should be as
important in society no more and no less than any other physical characterstic,
such as shoe size, length of left pinky finger, thickness of ear drum, etc.

My first thought was that if it had said, "Size 10 named to high court" it
would sound extremely, well, silly.  As in, so what?  Lots of folks wear
size 10 shoes.

I don't mean this to belittle anyone's cultural heritage -- but I personally
believe that is a separate issue from physical features.  I further do not
intend for this to submerge or weaken the growth or education about
anyone's culture.  I would hope (and believe) that there is more to the culture
designated "African American" than just skin color (I mean, although it
is certainly a physical attribute likely to be shared by people who
identify with this culture, I don't think it should *define* the culture).
I hope (and believe) that all cultures are (a) equally worthy of study
and belonging to and (b) more complex than skin color.  So don't get me
wrong on this!

language is obviously a powerful thing, and how the media uses it is
even more powerful.  I thus have three objections to this headline:

	(1) Skin color is just one of many physical features that ought
		to be entirely irrelevant to Prof. Scott being selected
		for the supreme court.  I doubt his shoe size was considered,
		or his blood type, or the amount of hair on his head.
	(2) The word "Black" seems to mean "person with very dark
		skin color".  We don't have comparable words for most other
		genetic traits:  We don't say "Bald named to high court" or
		"BigNose named to high court", or "Type O named to high
		court" -- in fact, we don't have words that stand alone for
		most:  BigNose is certainly not a common term, nor is
		there (that I know of) a neutral, commonly accepted term
		for "someone with a big nose".  Let alone, "someone who
		wears size 10 shoes".  Additionally, we don't say "Green
		named to high court" to indicate someone with green eyes.
		Or "Mauve named to high court", which would mean almost
		nothing I can think of.
	(3) If the word had been replaced with an equally valid alternate
		choice for the same feature, e.g., "White", this would be
		(a) as semantically senseless but also (b) a loaded word.

So I sit here and wonder:  Wouldn't we have a lot less tension relating to
physical attributes if each of us, and the media, adopted the following
policy:
	When talking about another human, omit skin color, gender, or
	any other physical attribute in a sentence if it is nonsense
	when replaced with something non-controversial, such as shoe size.

	Alternatively, omit if it would be unacceptable to use another choice
	for that same attribute:  "White named to high court" would be
	outrageous.

(I suggest this headline should read "Professor named to high court"
or "Scott named to high court".)

Clearly, there are cases where these things matter.  For example, if
you want to describe a person named Joe to someone so they can find them
in a crowd, you might say "Joe is about 6', average weight, short hair,
black skin, and usually wears a light brown leather jacket."  But to say,
"Joe is Black, 6' ..." to me sounds like somehow "Black" is more than
just the color of his skin when ==>IN THIS CONTEXT<== it is conveying nothing
more than skin color.  This also has nothing to do with whether he was chosen
based on skin color or not; nor whether it would be right to do so.  The
question is whether it makes sense to point out to everyone "hey, this guy
has black colored skin".  

I would also argue the same tests apply for many non-physical
characteristics, such as religion.  Even though this is more of a
"choice" issue, unlike skin color, it has caused a lot of strife arguing
about it in contexts that don't matter.

Anyway, what is the public opinion on this?  I was thinking of communicating
this to the RMN with a letter to the editor, but I thought I'd first
try out the net, to see if I'm being inadvertently extremely insensitive
somehow.  (Which gets back to my initial disclaimer, that I don't want to
be insensitive, but sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.)
I'm not really into Politically Correct language, for that matter; however
this seems to be far out of the ordinary with language.  (I mean, "overweight"
carries a pretty specific meaning, as in, more weight than is healthy.  On
the other hand, it still should only be mentioned when it is relevant to do
so.)  And I likewise feel it's up to a group to name themselves, and
I'll use that.  So is this in that category?  And even if so, should it
be used even when it doesn't add anything, but just serves to point out
that someone is different?

On the other hand, if folks think this is a sound linguistic policy, we
could start informing other people and the media.

Somehow, though, we humans need to learn to treat humans as humans, not
as This or That.

Thoughts?
-- 

Andrew Burt 		   					  aburt@du.edu

      "And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped"
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american