Note: This is very much a work in progress.
I am giving up the use of the following words except in quoted speech or when talking about the word it words, I will not use them in my own voice as if they were reasonable ways of thinking about things.
Note that this has nothing to do with what The Economist calls “trembling racial sensibilities”, with what the right calls political correctness and the left calls decency. Rather it is about avoiding some of the thinking (being) built into English.
Oscar, Grammy, Emmy – use White Oscar, White Grammy, etc.
mainstream culture – use “US television and schools”, “White”, “White mainstream culture”, etc, depending on what is meant.
The (mainstream) media – use Big Media if it comes from one of the half dozen or so companies that produce 90% of what people in the US read, watch or listen to.
The press – use White press, White Liberal Press, Big Media, depending.
(world) history – use White History, Western history, depending.
known world – known to whom?
America, American – use “US” if that is what is meant. For example, use US Whites or US White Americans, not just White Americans. When talking about race in the US, use Black, White, Native, Asian and Latino – the five-race model. When talking about broad cultures in the Americas, use Anglo American, Latin American, etc. Most posts have to do with the US, so it is enough to make that clear in the opening and then just say “Whites”, “Blacks”, etc.
Indian – use US Native, First Nation, Amerindian, if not something more specific like Iroquois or Lakota.
European – use White (race) or Western (culture) or, better yet, something more specific, like British or Basque.
sub-Saharan Africa – use Africa, Black Africa, Black, etc.
Middle East – use South West Asia, West Asia, Arab world, Muslim world, Western oil supplies, etc, depending on what is meant.
ethnic, ethnicity – these push a White Default and are so misunderstood that it is best to avoid them. Use “race” if that is what is meant.
tribe – use nation or First Nation.
terrorist, thug, savage – avoid. These stereotype Muslims, Blacks and Natives as naturally violent. Be more specific, like jihadist, drug dealer, etc.
settler, pioneer – use colonizer or invader. Settler and pioneer push the idea that the land was unsettled, which is almost never the case.
illegal immigrant – undocumented worker or immigrant.
God – use Allah, Yahweh, the Christian god, etc.
women – use White women, if that is what is meant
populist – use nativist, racist, White nationalist, etc, if that is what is meant.
pro-life – use anti-abortion, at least till the pro-life movement joins Black Lives Matter,
working class – use White working-class or just White if this is a classist fig-leaf to hide the fact that Trump had “overwhelming (White) support”.
quoting Trump – fact check always.
– Abagond, 2016, 2019.
Update (June 29th 2019): removed alt-right (it no longer functions as a euphemism), and overwhelming support (not a term I would be tempted to use) and added pro-life.
See also:
- style guide
- The Economist: the unauthorized style guide
- If English had a Black Default
- White Default
- Whitespeak
- normalizing Trump
- copspeak
- White people wrote the dictionary
539
You on your deen then, abagond?
LikeLike
I understand what you’re trying to do by highlighting the fact that the Americas extend far beyond the US. However, when you use a term like “US Asians,” I feel like there’s an implication that being Asian is a person’s main identity, that she is “really” Asian deep down and just American by circumstance (even if her family has been here for ages). Meanwhile, Asian-American implies that American is the primary identity and Asian is just a modifier – a better implication in my book.
This principle applies to other races as well. For example, you could say, “US Blacks usually speak English, while many Ugandan Blacks speak Swahili.” Black is the main identity, while the location is just a detail. If you say, “Black Americans eat about the same amount of watermelon as White Americans,” American is the main category and the races are just modifiers. What is really more important about a person, his skin color or the culture in which he grew up? I would say the latter.
Interestingly, in English, you can often tell the cultural importance of an adjective based on how close it is to the noun. We would say, “poor White female voters” but not “female White poor voters” because most English speakers see gender as most important, followed by race and then class. We would say, “the big green apple” and not “the green big apple” because we mainly categorize apples by color and not size.
LikeLike
Paige does have a point. A construction like “U.S. Arabs” seems to have an “othering” connotation compared to “Arab Americans,” where “Americans” is the noun and “Arab” is the modifier.
It is a conundrum because there are also good reasons to avoid “America(n)” when referring to the U.S.
Some people use USians, which personally I’m not wild about (at least for formal use), but perhaps that would be a suitable compromise? Asian USians, Arab USians, Hispanic USians, etc.
LikeLike
Your articles on language are helpful, and it allowed me to spot this from the TIME article naming Donald Trump as person of the year 2016, as said by Shannon Goodin, age 24, in Owosso, MI:
“Politicians don’t appeal to us. Clinton would go out of her way to appeal to minorities, immigrants, but she didn’t really for everyday Americans.”
You see what she did there?
LikeLike
I feel the same way when someone says Jew ore Jewish. I think they should say Sephardi, Ashkenazi, African Jew, Ethiopian Jew, Chinese Jew, European Jew, or Hebrew. Israeli is a nationality and not all Jews are Israeli or even want to be.
LikeLike
Abagond, as they used to say in Kenya: ” Keep on keeping on!”
LikeLike
What is wrong with the word God? It is the English equivalent of the Arabic word Allah.
The use of an Arabic word, Allah, in English, is arab-centric.
LikeLike
Molo Abagond,
Unjani wena?
Long-time reader first time responder.
As someone who actually lives in Sub Saharan Africa (meaning below the Sahara) no-one here actually gives a damn that it’s called Sub-Saharan Africa. No-one here thinks it refers to being sub human or anything like that. I have noticed this has come up in a previous post too.
Please do not use your privileged & arrogant American (or the US – American just rolls off the tongue better) position to speak on behalf of the residents of sub-Saharan regions.
Africa / Black Africa / Black are also incorrect because of diverse backgrounds (Yes, not just Black people come from Sub-Saharan Africa – we have Coloured (legit legal term denoting mixed race), East Asians/Chinese mainly, South Asian/Indian, Whites & descendants of Malay. Apparently we ALL come this region anyway.
And if you are going to use African has a denoter for Blacks, what exactly is wrong with using Europeans for Whites.
Haha, Americans (or US citizens) once again trying to decide what is best for the rest of the world. You’re just as bad as your White citizens.
But I do enjoy reading your blog and your point of view
Nkosi sikelela iAfrica!
Mzi
(PS: have you actually been to Africa? or are you just another African American who waxes lyrical about our beautiful continent but can’t be asked to come check it out.)
LikeLiked by 1 person
Apologies – I did just click on the link to the other Sub-Saharian articles where there is a monster comment thread (seems mostly to say that it is a racist term). But again no-one that lives here thinks along those lines. We regard oursleves as African fullstop. I do wish all your readers come check out the Motherland.
LikeLike
Abagind, I’m sorry, but as a Christian, I must tell you plainly that I don’t worship Allah! I’m sorry, but I just don’t!
LikeLiked by 1 person
^ Allah and God are the same being.
abagond, Id add the word “fair” to this list. Its a word that should be used only to explicitly mean white. It should not be used to describe “justice”, “fun”, “beauty”, “reasonable”, or “unbias”.
LikeLike
Be more descriptive and less evasive. CALL them out on their-aka-wypipo ‘ish’ LOL
LikeLike
Speaking of language, I’ve noticed that Trump surrogates often take an incredulous tone to accusations of corruption or authoritarian, in a sort of “How could you even think that about Trump?” kind of way. Here’s a very recent example:
>”If meetings happened and important stuff was decided, voters have a right to know,” said Mr. McKenna, who stepped down after Trump banned working lobbyists from the transition. “It’s not a matter of national security. The transition is not asking about nuclear weapons. They are asking about meetings about modeling for God’s sake.”
LikeLike
No matter how bad life gets, at least I can console myself that I am not a Trump surrogate.
LikeLike
@ Mzi
Welcome to non-lurkerdom!
I am not saying no one should use the words on the list. I am saying that I will not, at least for the time being. A sort of personal experiment.
I am not speaking as a representative of Africa. Hardly. I have never even been there (yet). I am speaking as someone who speaks English who notices how words are used.
In my experience “sub-Saharan Africa” is a euphemism for Black Africa, a way to name a racialized entity without using race. “Inner-city” is another example of that. Both use what seem to be neutral geographical terms as way to say “Black” without seeming to say “Black”. If you mean Black Africa, then just say Black Africa. Why are we being fake and indirect about it?
I think just plain “African” is better. But even “African”, like “European” and “Asian”, can fall prey to what I call the continental fallacy, the idea that everyone from a given continent is somehow alike. I cover that in the post on the term “Europe”:
If you click on “European” in the post it goes there too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ Paige @ Solitaire
Good points. There is no good solution to my mind. “US” is awkward too. I used to use “America” and “American” all the time on this blog – just look at earlier posts. But since doing a post on the term, it no longer sits well with me. Well, come to think of it, I have been unhappy with it since at least age 14 when I used “Unisian”. It never caught on.
LikeLike
God v Allah.
The trouble with “God” is like the trouble with “America” – or even “doctor” – the term has been narrowed in an Anglocentric way, to mean what most English-speaking people have in mind by those terms. So God becomes the Christian god, the god of Abraham.
In Arabic, “Allah” just means “god”, but again, in practice, it means the god that most Arabic-speaking people worship. But in English it means the god that Muslims worship. Which is the god of Abraham, the same god that Jews and Christians worship.
By choosing “Allah” I make the point that Muslims and Christians worship the same god.
BUT, as we know from the Larycia Hawkins Incident, many Evangelical Protestants do not believe that the Christian god and the Muslim god are the same. Which I am fine with since the Christianity of plenty of White people seems to be fake anyway. They are telling on themselves without knowing it.
More on Larycia Hawkins:
LikeLike
you can be a fuslim too, there are plenty of them, but it seems like a little wierd, to say the least, to habitually say allah when you are a self-described catholic, i get that you’re trying to be more ‘inclusive’ and ‘anti-mainstream’, actually in line with not only papal ducat and my sense that the koran would argue the abrahamic god is pretty much the same as allah and so forth.
also, saying ‘US blacks’ eg seems to also just being short ie trying to save characters or something, perhaps in a long winded scholarly article? well anyway seems a little ‘culturally appropriative?’ and sideways/disingenuous for some reason, but i know you have been taking a lot of static lately!
she’s kicking me off my computer now!
LikeLike
No matter how bad life gets, at least I can console myself that I am not a Trump surrogate.
Did you write that whilst in your cups?
LikeLike
Abagond, why don’t you do a post on the phenomenology of racist catchphrases that have fallen out of use, such as “I’m free, white and twenty-one”? Hell, there was a movie made with that tittle! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free,_White_and_21
LikeLike
@ v8driver
According to Catholicism, Muslims worship the same god. I have read the Koran and the god there is most certainly the god of Abraham, the same one you see in the Bible. It is not the Flying Spaghetti Monster or something. Arabic-speaking Christians call the Christian god “Allah”.
LikeLike
@Abagond
What is the difference between U.S. and America (In terms of meaning)?
Many people I know choose to use the title Higher Power. It is a good descriptive word for the god of anyones understanding. x
LikeLike
I think of America as being a more geographical term and U.S. to be a more political term.
Even if the U.S. were broken up or replaced by a completely different power, we would still have America.
LikeLike
@ Zoe Jordan
I agree with Jefe: the US is political, America is geographical. In English, America is a much older term that was narrowed in the late 1700s to mean mainly the US so that they became to be pretty much interchangeable.
LikeLike
So US is more like a geographically located take on it instead of that ableist thing called citizenship, which would make one an american? I can’t tell if it’s pretentious or heart-felt (well that’s not exactly true) so it may cloud the waters more than less without extra context.
LikeLike
ok I see we all have a different perception about US vs. ‘american’…
saying US blacks or whatever reminds me of like a commodity eg US poultry or … something like that.
LikeLike
heard a car guy on tv the other day refer to the US as ‘north america’ (implied) as in vs. canada, it’s an outmoded ‘market’ designator
LikeLike
@V8driver
When I think of ‘America’ I tend to think of the whole continent so an American citizen could be from Bolivia, the U.S., Canada, Cuba etc, whereas a U.S. citizen is just from the states, Just my perspective. x
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ Zoe Jordan
That seems to be where much of the objection to “America(n)” lies, in that the U.S. has usurped the name of two continents.
Thing is, the full name is the United States of America (U.S.A.), so it does kind of make sense to say Americans, at least from the U.S. perspective. For comparison’s sake, I believe that Mexico’s offficial name translates as the United States of Mexico. All the other countries in the hemisphere have names that lend themselves to other constructions, like Bolivians and Canadians and Brazilians, whereas ours really doesn’t. (U.S.ians is awkward, and how should it be pronounced, anyway?)
On the other hand, your perspective also makes sense. If people from anywhere in Europe are Europeans and people from anywhere in Africa are Africans, then it seems logical that people from anywhere in the Americas should be called Americans. In practical use, the way we get around this (in the U.S., at least) is to say North Americans, Central Americans, and South Americans. So to me, “American” signifies a citizen of the U.S.A. unless preceded by one of the directional adjectives.
Which is not to argue that any particular nomenclature is correct. I understand why the rest of the world is often frustrated with or flummoxed by the way we refer to ourselves as Americans. It’s not an easy fix, though.
LikeLiked by 1 person
@ Solitaire.
‘All the other countries in the hemisphere have names that lend themselves to other constructions, like Bolivians and Canadians and Brazilians, whereas ours really doesn’t. (U.S.ians is awkward, and how should it be pronounced, anyway?)’
This is a very valid point. We have a similar thing going on here having 2 names; United Kingdom and Great Britain. Great Britain clearly has connotations of empiricism yet British roles off the tongue where as U.K.ish/ian doesn’t. Having said that the days of being the U.K. are probably numbered anyway with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland becoming increasingly desirous for independence. We could become the Formerly-Great-No-longer-United-Kingdom-of-England(-and-Cornwall) (Cornwall occasionally maintain they want independence too as they had many centuries ago and many Cornish people do not consider themselves English at all!)
‘Which is not to argue that any particular nomenclature is correct. I understand why the rest of the world is often frustrated with or flummoxed by the way we refer to ourselves as Americans. It’s not an easy fix, though.’
You are Americans its just that so are those from South and North of the States – And the Caribbean. Its just shameful that so many don’t seem to recognise this… A little anecdote, when my daughter was about 10 she told me she really wanted to go to Caribbia! She’s very daft. lol
LikeLike
@ Zoe Jordan
“Cornwall occasionally maintain they want independence too as they had many centuries ago and many Cornish people do not consider themselves English at all!”
If I remember correctly, wasn’t Cornish one of the Celtic languages? And wasn’t Cornwall one of the Celtic strongholds after the Anglo-Saxon invasion? So I can see why many Cornish people might not consider themselves English, although I don’t know how strong the Celtic/English distinction still is in the population of Cornwall — or if perhaps there’s another reason for their thinking that.
LikeLike
@ Solitaire
You are exactly correct.
There are a number of Cornish people who still see themselves as separate but not loads.
LikeLike
@herneith no that was mostly sarcasm directed towards abagond, the avowed catholic, using ‘allah’ for gos. Just seemed snarky at best.
LikeLike
It’s going to be finish of mine day, but before end I am reading this enormous paragraph to improve my experience.
LikeLike
Update: removed alt-right (it no longer functions as a euphemism), and overwhelming support (not a term I would be tempted to use) and added pro-life.
LikeLike