The one word which has been removed from the social vocabulary over the last few decades, especially in West is the ‘N word’. There weren’t any regulations against it but people just stopped using it. No one even respects an individual who uses that anymore. I do know that it is still used in some countries like India and Singapore but overall no one uses it anymore as it has become devoid of any utility.
Keeping the tradition of George Carlin’s ‘ Seven Dirty Words’, I want to share seven words of no social utility in 2018.
- Racist
- Fascist
- Nazi
- Free speech crusader
- Skin colour(Black activist, brown man, white supremacist)
- (Native, African, Asian, European, Indian) American
- Islamaphobe
Let me address one point before I take this forward. I do not think there aren’t fascists or racists or Nazis but these words have baggage which is not applicable for a conversation in 2018. Now, I want to go through each word and share why I feel that way. I feel the main reason behind the continuous use of these phrases is that these were some of the important phenomena of the twentieth century that affected people’s lives.
Racist
This term has lost its utility because of two key reasons.
- It is only used against white people and that too quite indiscriminately. I have never seen it used against people of Chinese, Indian or African origin. I have seen just as much racism in these cultures as the rest.
- The term has become so abused that we are failing to distinguish between people who are really racists or in some instance genocidal against normal people with whom we disagree.
Fascist
Just like racism, I am seeing this term being used against everyone. Many democratically elected leaders from Barack Obama to Donald Trump have been called fascists. Fascism as defined as “the radical authoritarian ultranationalism, characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and control of industry and commerce“. Any pro-democratic leader cannot be called fascist.
Nazi
Similar to Fascism, National Socialism is a movement defined by the ideology of the Nazi party. The term was coined towards the end of the 18th century. Again not every socialist is a Nazi and not every racial supremacist is a Nazi. It is a significant attack on an individual when you call them a Nazi. It is one thing to call someone a Nazi sympathiser but a leap of irrational faith to call them Nazi. The movement doesn’t exist but for certain pockets. Above all most of them are banned. Even organisations like KKK are not Nazi organisations.
Free speech crusader
This is my pet peeve for this list. I am tired of unintelligent people gaining attention because they referred to themselves as a free speech crusader. I haven’t seen many free speech crusaders in my life. I most definitely don’t see any now. Most of them (even some people I like) like Sam Harris, Jordon Peterson, Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, Bill Maher, Milo Yiannopoulos and Dave Rubin to name a few become free speech activists when
- Something doesn’t offend them but there is a general furore around it
- Something they say offends people and there are protests against it
- Something someone says that they like and there are protests against it
Quoting George Carlin, narrow and selfish interests don’t impress me. I find such crusades to be repugnant just as the people whom they fight.
Skin colour adjectives(Black activist, brown man, white supremacist)
I find this particularly annoying when people refer to others with their skin colour. However, there is a particularly annoying stereotype in this as well. It is never a Black or a Brown Supremacist and a White activist. It is always the other way around when you use the skin colour adjectives. Furthermore, it is always used by people who are against racism. It is meaningless and above all counterproductive. I also want to differentiate this from people who are comfortable in a neighbourhood of a certain ethnicity. There is nothing wrong with a bunch of people of a certain ethnicity to want to live in the same neighbourhood. It is not racism or bigotry. Also, people like to speak certain languages or live in a certain way. If a bunch of vegan people decide to form a colony and live there, it is not an issue for me. Even if they think that vegans are the best and there should be a country for vegans, I am still fine. Where it becomes a problem is when they infringe on other’s right to exist or live their life a different way. If I replace vegan with white or black or brown, the core of the argument still remains the same. This makes any description of a bunch of people using their skin colour counterproductive to the broad argument that we want to make.
Native, African, Asian, European, Indian American
This one is definitely an American trait. I particularly love the response of Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador to the United States to comedian Trevor Noah’s comment on calling the World Cup winning French Football Team as ‘The African Team’. He said, “Unlike in the United States of America, France does not refer to its citizens based on their race, religion or origin. To us, there is no hyphenated identity. Roots are an individual reality.”. This was followed by people calling French as not a culture for comedy or failure to call people. It does shed light on this rather unintelligent practice of calling people from where they come from and mostly based on their skin colour. Barack Obama was called African American but he was born to a Kenyan father and an American Mother. While he does have a part of his ancestry from Kenya the other part is from England. Calling him African American is both inaccurate and unnecessary.
Islamaphobe
The final one in my list is a recent kid in the block, a 20th creation which can be thrown anywhere in a conversation without it actually adding any value. There are two main reasons why I find this descriptor particularly useless. This word is used in two circumstances.
- One religious group who hate the other
- Fear of terrorism
In the first point, there is no need for a special word for hatred towards a certain religion. There is no word for hatred towards Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, Christianity etc. Anti-Semitism, on the other hand, it not just hatred towards Jews based on their existence, it is hatred towards Jews coming from certain religious constructs within Christianity and Islam against Judaism.
On the second point, it is a genuine problem. Most of my Muslim friends are afraid of terrorism. If calling out against radicalisation and terrorism is bad, I am not sure what is good. So, this usage is also meaningless. Actually, I feel we should rename this to “Terrorphobia” and acknowledge that it is practical.
Demystifying a skeptic's world 