New Year’s Resolution: Use “Harmful” Words

Stanford University IT department’s “Elimination of Harmful Words Initiative” document was released recently, with its list of harmful words, suggested alternatives, and explanations for why the forbidden words are so bad. But what is truly harmful is giving fools and knaves the power to tell us how to talk when there is no real moral issue at stake.

Make all the resolutions you want about flossing and other health stuff. For myself, I’ll floss when there’s something stuck in my teeth. For several years I’ve been making big picture resolutions, mostly in the moral sphere. Two years ago it was to have more enemies. Last year I didn’t write about it, but I resolved to get a new job. (I did.) This year I have been given a new resolution thanks to the IT department at Stanford University. My resolution is to use more “harmful” words. I put the word in quotation marks for two reasons: it is the term used by Stanford, and it is an absurd term that deserves what we now call scare quotes but which we might just as well call ridicule quotes.

If the reader has not heard, the Stanford University IT department’s “Elimination of Harmful Words Initiative” document was released recently, with its list of harmful words, suggested alternatives, and explanations for why the forbidden words are so bad. It was password-protected since most universities like to hide their more pernicious and idiotic behavior from public consumption. (Note to parents and teens considering colleges, as well as alums not sure whether to give donations: ask for access to the internal website. If the institution won’t give it, ask a current student or faculty member to let you see it.) Alas, Stanford could not keep this delicious bit of wokery from being leaked. Though administrators tried to control the damage, admitting that this list was not mandatory and would not be enforced, they also said that instead of junking the list, it would simply be further edited.[i]

What strikes the reader first is the hilarious note affixed to the whole list. “This website contains language that is offensive or harmful. Please engage with the material at your own pace.” This note is not called a “trigger warning” but instead a “content warning.” That is because the former term is itself forbidden because: “The phrase can cause stress about what’s to follow. Additionally, one can never know what may or may not trigger a particular person.” Whether labeled a trigger warning or not, the implicit idea is that human beings are like fragile emotional firearms which go off (involuntarily) at the slightest discomfort brought on by a word they have been taught is bad.

The document as it currently stands is divided into ten different sections: ableist, ageism, colonialism, culturally appropriative, gender-based, imprecise language, institutionalized racism, person-first, violent, and additional considerations. I have no problem saying that some of the terms are indeed ones that we might better avoid to be kind and considerate: “retard” for people with disabilities seems harsh while “Jewed” to mean “haggled down” are ones I think we might all drop with no loss to our language. But almost all the rest of the terms are fairly benign and/or add color. “Gyp” or “gypped” might have to do with the Romani people, but there is also a completely different explanation.[ii] I’m not going to drop terms because of pseudo-etymology. One good example is the idiocy involved in avoiding “brown-bag lunch” because of a historic practice in some black communities whereby those whose skin was darker than a paper sack were excluded from some activities. The reason we refer to brown-bag lunches is because the paper sacks that are manufactured for people to bring their lunch in are brown. Even when it comes to real etymology, such as the Southern origins of the term “grandfathered,” I confess I don’t see why the generic term must be avoided. Progressives spend most of their time complaining about “not teaching history,” but then want to eliminate every word from history whose origins might be good reminders of anything concrete.

Indeed, when it comes to the racial terms themselves, I found myself amazed that the infamous “n-word” does not appear. I suspect that this is because the woke have to tie themselves in knots to explain how it is the worst of all terms that should never ever be uttered except by black people themselves who are using it ironically to subvert white supremacy, build community, or some other humanitarian project. Given that anybody who’s been around black people has heard it used in several registers—sometimes ironically and sometimes not ironically at all but in the same hateful way any real white supremacist would use it—it is not surprising that the woke censors in Stanford IT would avoid discussing it. Instead, they want to burden us with avoiding the use of any word with “black” in it: “black hat,” “black mark,” “black sheep,” “blacklist,” “blackballed,” “black box.” Each, the guide tells us, “[a]ssigns negative connotations to the color black, racializing the term.”

Um, no. Especially when it comes to “black box,” which makes black stand for something mysterious, this is some of the stupidest stuff you can find. Light, dark, white, and black are powerful because of day and night, light and its absence. The attempt to label all such usages racial simply shows the powerful ignorance of these woke would-be censors. I will continue to not use the “n-word” (and clearly under the rule of “silence is violence,” Stanford should be attacked for supporting usage of it by not condemning it!), but I’m grateful for a reminder to use these other terms as well as such terms as “whitelist,” “whitespace,” and all the rest.

The rule with such stuff is that bad connotations are somehow said to make a word forbidden. So we much forego such terms as “master” and “chief.” The idea that these terms come from slavery or from American Indian tribes is stupid. Both words come from European languages and have nothing to do with chattel slavery or America at all. That they might have been used in ways that are offensive or that offend irrational people does not mean we cannot use them.

So, too, with “brave” as a noun. Supposedly this term makes us think of American Indians as “noble savages” and makes the “indigenous male… less than a man.” But savage doesn’t mean less than human; it means primitive and uncivilized. And nobility is something good. And “too many chiefs, not enough Indians” does not “[trivialize] indigenous community structures” any more than “too many cooks” trivializes kitchen culture. I’m not going to refer to a woman I suspect to be American Indian as “Pocahontas,” but I will refer to obnoxious women of any color as “Karen,” despite the fact that this was my beloved mother’s name. Oh, and about my use of “American Indian.” The list doesn’t cover that, but it does use “indigenous,” which is false since all human life began in Africa somewhere. Unless you grew up in the Garden of Eden, you are not indigenous to any place.

Concerning all the gender terms that are forbidden and their possible substitutes, I will summarize the approach: anything that implies that there are men and women alone is to be forbidden. Anything that uses language whereby the male term can stand for a generic human group must be gotten rid of. Sorry, guys. I’m both going to keep affirming “the binary” and using English the way it’s been spoken forever. It may be one small step for this man, but it will be a giant leap for mankind enmeshed in linguistic ignorance and ideological stupidity.

Perhaps the stupidest thing in the list was the suggestion that we should not refer to citizens of the United States as “Americans” because it somehow implies that the U. S. is the most important country in the Americas. Frankly, the U.S. is the most important country in the Americas in terms of military protection and foreign aid. If we continue to bow down to the kind of know-nothings responsible for making such lists, it will be bad for Americans and for all the other countries that depend on us in various ways. But I don’t think anybody says “Americans” with the thought of the implication Stanford asserts anyway.

The problem with the Stanford IT group is that they seem to know nothing much about language, the human person, or anything else except the dictum that any offense taken by approved groups somehow justifies their attempts to censor words. While Stanford denied that this list would be mandatory or enforced, it did not promise to end the project. Given that it is about the “elimination” of supposedly harmful words, I don’t doubt for an instant that they will make some future list mandatory—and will indeed punish faculty, staff, and students who use the wrong terms. They aren’t putting away the guillotines; they are merely sharpening them.

These linguistic Jacobins, committed like the Committee for Public Safety was to tyranny, are not going to give up. Too many administrators have greenlighted their actions for too long in the false hope that they would be moderate or moderated. They will not. This is the tragedy of American life in so many realms. Public authority has tolerated those who wish to destroy history, language, and traditions in the vain hope that good sense would prevail. But it will not as long as people are cowed by such figures and such rules.

Decline is a choice. In our common life it is a choice that is made every time ordinary people give in to the irrational demands to police the language for reasons that make no sense or (in the case of “gender”) are in the pursuit of a destruction of our understanding of what it means to be man and woman, made in the image of God.

I will not bow down to the academic demands that my native language be bleached—how curious! To bleach something is to make it white, yet in this sentence it is something negative—for reasons that are foolish or destructive.

C’mon, guys! I’m on the warpath to get more Americans to save the English language. I’m neither your guru nor your chief, but I do want you to man the barricades against the insane and crazy thugs who wish to bully us. What is truly harmful is giving fools and knaves the power to tell us how to talk when there is no real moral issue at stake. Resolve with me this year to master and use the colorful images that make our glorious English language so vibrant and fertile.

[i] Joseph Mackinnon, “Stanford Says it will review its master list of verboten words after backlash,” The Blaze, December 28, 2022.  For the leaked document, see here: “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative.”

[ii] Online Etymology Dictionary, s.v. “gyp (v.)”

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The featured image is “Sentimental Ballad” (1940) by Grant Wood, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.