Language Police Are Messing with You
Social Justice Warriors (who prefer to be called “woke people”, or something like that) are obsessed with policing language. Sometimes, it seems as if the worst sins they can conceive of consist of talking to or about people using the wrong linguistic expressions.
E.g., when I hear complaints about President Trump, the most common type of complaint I hear is about something the President said. Not a policy he implemented or refused to implement, not an actual crime he committed, but a comment that he posted on Twitter or uttered in a news conference. (Granted, many of these comments are dumb and malicious.)
But it’s not just stupid and spiteful comments that draw the SJWs’ ire. They're very concerned about making up new rules for how we’re supposed to refer to people, what we can talk about, what is to be considered “offensive”, etc. -- in other words, policing language.
Some linguistic expressions are genuinely offensive, and almost everyone finds them so. E.g., the “n” word is deliberately offensive – its actual function is to express hate or contempt. But that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about ordinary words that are not intended to express any untoward attitude, but leftists one day start calling them offensive or insensitive. Then there are new expressions that the leftists invent and start telling everybody to use.
E.g., black people used to be called “colored people”. This expression was not intended to be, and was not, the slightest bit offensive or insulting – which you can tell from the fact that a famous civil rights organization named itself the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Later, leftists decided that “colored” was improper and that the proper way of referring to these people was “African American”. Still later, once “African American” had become too familiar, the SJW’s decided that the really proper term (covering blacks as well as other dark-skinned people) was “people of color”. If you rearrange the words, that converts a hurtful expression into a token of pride and solidarity. I saw one woke blogger explain the difference very clearly: the expression “person of color” was devised by left-wing ideologues; hence, it’s good. Duh! (They didn’t put it exactly like that, but that’s the gist.)
There are similar rules for how to talk about physically or mentally disabled people, how to talk about transgender people, what pronouns one can use (e.g., the singular use of “they” has recently ascended), and other ordinary words in our language that you shouldn’t use (e.g., “fireman”, “congressman”, etc.).
If you actually are an SJW, you probably have no idea how all of this strikes most ordinary people. (Not well.) If you aren’t, you probably wonder what is going on – why are these people so obsessed with linguistic expressions? Don’t they have enough important things to worry about? Like maybe tangible policy issues?
Here’s my theory. I don’t think the actual function of all this is to benefit minorities or to stop them from being hurt by words. Sorry, but I just find it hard to believe that there are all of these people who are in pain whenever they hear the phrase “colored people” instead of “people of color”, or whatever the latest approved expression is. I think language policing is more like a move in a political power game. I think there are a few different functions:
1. Faction Signaling
It is important for members of any social group to be able to identify each other and to separate themselves from outsiders. That way, you know whom to help and whom to hate. It's like how competing football teams have to wear different-colored jerseys. In this case, we have a tribe that is ideologically defined, which poses a prima facie problem since you can’t immediately see people’s ideology. You can try asking people political questions, but this could be awkward and time-consuming, and people might dissimulate.
By coming up with lots of arbitrary or stilted rules for how to use language, you create a convenient way for members of your tribe to identify each other. If someone is following all the rules, you know they’re a tribe member. The reason for changing the rules periodically is to increase the costs for outsiders and reduce the chances that an outsider will actually know what language they’re supposed to use – thus reducing the rate of false positives.
The reason for making lots of rules is partly, again, to reduce false positives (only the ideologically committed will learn all the rules), and also partly to inject faction signaling opportunities into as many conversations as possible. That way, you don’t have to bring up a specific topic to find out someone’s political orientation but can just have any conversation. Which leads us to the second function.
2. Politicization
The second function is to politicize ordinary life. Other people can’t talk normally without giving you an opportunity to inject your political ideology into the discussion. Whatever the topic of conversation is, even if it prima facie has nothing to do with the main points of your ideology, there’s a good chance that you’ll get to hijack the discussion and turn it toward your ideology when someone uses the “wrong” word for something. This enables you to draw attention to yourself and your own preoccupations, to start lecturing other people about politics, and to prevent people from wasting time thinking about anything else.
For an analogy, imagine if the Jehovah’s Witnesses (who love proselytizing about Jesus) found a way to interpret half of all ordinary statements as making some sort of reference to Jesus. If you tried to order a pizza in front of a Witness, they would seize the opportunity to tell you how the way you just ordered the pizza presupposes a mistaken view about Jesus. For SJW's, "anti-racism" is the equivalent of Jesus.
3. Dominance
The third function is to dominate and silence others. This works because practically everyone in contemporary America is afraid of being called a “racist” (and, to a lesser extent, being accused of other sorts of prejudice). Also, complaining about people's word usage is in general a good way to shut them up; e.g., even complaining about someone’s grammar could shut them up. Because no one wants to debate about their use of language. Whatever it is that a person wants to talk about when they open their mouth, it is almost never that. If you make clear that they can’t talk about whatever they wanted to say without first having a debate about the use of words, then they’ll probably just shut up.
Which, if you’re an SJW, is what you want. You want to silence anyone who isn’t an SJW, take control of the conversation, and help your faction dominate society. This is good because your faction has the one truth, only they can save society, and no one else has anything to teach you.
4. They’re Fucking with You
The language police are fucking with us. What I mean by that is partly explained by #3 above, and partly it’s that they’re testing the rest of us, seeing what they can get away with. How much can they get other people to dance to their tune?
An anecdote
I witnessed an odd interaction the other night. There was a disheveled man in the Whole Foods Market (a white man, if you feel like you need to know that), talking to a cop. I missed the beginning of the conversation. But the man was trying to get the cop to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. The cop insisted that the man didn’t need an ambulance, since there was nothing apparently physically wrong with him. (Indeed, he had no apparent injuries and no apparent difficulty walking.) The cop gave him brief directions to walk to the hospital. The guy kept trying for a few minutes, and the cop kept telling him to go walk there, if he wanted to go there so much. The cop’s tone made clear that he thought the guy was obviously lying and should stop wasting the cop’s time. Eventually, the disheveled man left bitterly.
Why was he doing that? Assume (as I did) that the guy did not actually need medical attention, and in any case was perfectly able to walk to the hospital. Why would he pretend to be sick, or injured, or whatever? Why did he want an unnecessary ambulance ride?
My best guess: he wanted attention, and he wanted people feeling sorry for him and working to help him. So he pretended to be hurt.
I guess those are natural human desires. You can kind of understand that. But at the same time, the rest of society doesn’t have time for that. We have our own stuff to worry about and we can’t let people hijack our attention by pretending to be hurt. The rest of society has to send those people on their way.
That’s how it is with the Social Justice Warriors. When they claim to be deeply hurt by all the words that other people are using, the ideas that they don’t agree with, and all the “epistemic violence” going on around them, we need to tell them to go ahead and walk to the hospital by themselves.