In the face of mock­ery and crit­i­cism, Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty recent­ly took down a web­site grand­ly named “The Elim­i­na­tion of Harm­ful Lan­guage Ini­tia­tive”. The most egre­gious exam­ples of what its cre­ators appar­ent­ly deemed ter­ri­ble wrongs that need right­ing were a clar­i­on call that the high­er the dud­geon, the more like­ly it is to alien­ate than educate.

More than 100 words “con­sid­ered racist or harm­ful” in the thir­teen page doc­u­ment did include some that were wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion . But what­ev­er “lessons” could have been learned were sub­sumed by alleged ver­bal trans­gres­sions of dig­ni­ty on a lev­el of inani­ty that would be insult­ing had they not been laughable.
My favourite among the “Gen­der Based Lan­guage” that had to go was “balls to the wall”.
Accord­ing to the sav­iours from bias at Stan­ford it “attrib­ut­es per­son­al­i­ty traits to anatomy”.

To give you an idea of how ridicu­lous that is, the expres­sion refers to the use of WW2-era air­craft throt­tle handles.
If the balls (see  image on left) on top of them are pushed all the way to the ‘wall’ (firewall/instrument pan­el) the engines are run­ning at 100% of avail­able pow­er. Dam­age lim­i­ta­tion means it can only be done in emer­gency and for a lim­it­ed period.
“Bury the hatch­et” was deemed “cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion of a cen­turies-old tra­di­tion among some North Amer­i­can Indige­nous Peo­ples who buried their tools of war as a sym­bol of peace”.
It seems to me that falls more under the term of “bor­row­ing”, which is not a syn­onym for “belit­tling“ in any The­saurus I’ve consulted.
In fact, as Oscar Wilde put it: “Imi­ta­tion is the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery that medi­oc­rity can pay to greatness.”
If that’s not good enough, where do we draw the line?  Stop using “déjà vu” lest we offend the French? Eschew “Ciao” out of respect for Italians?

                       AMUSED AND BEMUSED

Inci­den­tal­ly, the insti­tu­tion whose web­site bills it as “The First Great Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty” has trou­ble with the use of “Amer­i­can”, because: “This term often refers to peo­ple from the Unit­ed States only, there­by insin­u­at­ing that the US is the most impor­tant coun­try in the Amer­i­c­as (which is actu­al­ly made up of 42 countries).
As a per­son born in the biggest coun­try in the Amer­i­c­as I appre­ci­ate the con­sid­er­a­tion. But rest assured that the appar­ent Amer­i­can belief in exclu­siv­i­ty in no way offends, or makes me feel infe­ri­or. Quite the oppo­site, in fact.
The initiative’s objec­tion to “thug” had me total­ly flum­moxed. Appar­ent­ly it’s bet­ter to say “sus­pect or crim­i­nal” because “although the term refers to a vio­lent per­son or crim­i­nal, it often takes on a racist con­no­ta­tion when used in cer­tain circles”.
I had no idea that being a bad per­son was relat­ed to eth­nic­i­ty, and if you imply it is, I think it’s you, not me, who is racist.

                                REACTION VS RESEARCH

Accord­ing to Stan­ford, refer­ring to a per­son as a “black sheep” assigned “neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions to the col­or black, racial­iz­ing the term”.
One can only assume the authors have nev­er seen a flock of sheep. The black one is invari­ably the odd one out, which is only racist if you think being so is a bad thing, which I sus­pect would come as a sur­prise to shep­herds, to say noth­ing of sheep.
As a knee-jerk ‘woke’ reac­tion, the prize on Stanford’s list has to go to “black­balled”, which sup­pos­ed­ly “assigns neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions to the col­or black, racial­iz­ing the term”. Ergo, it should be replaced by “banned” or “denied”.
Sur­pris­ing­ly, both are cor­rect. How­ev­er, the ori­gin of the term goes back to the 1700s, when club mem­bers would cast secret votes on mem­ber­ship using white and black wood­en or ivory balls. The black ones rep­re­sent­ed “no” votes.
The clas­sic exam­ple of vis­cer­al over-rid­ing rea­soned reac­tion to poten­tial offence was replac­ing “slave” with “out­cast” or “sec­ondary work­er”.
Des­ig­nat­ing those trans­port­ed from Africa to toil with­out rec­om­pense “sec­ondary work­ers”  is a def­i­n­i­tion of racism, not a panacea for it.
Of all the words relat­ing to racism, “slave” is one of the most evoca­tive pre­cise­ly because of the crime it con­notes. To trade it for pablum ter­mi­nol­o­gy smacks of — dare one say it — “white­wash­ing”.
But then again, Stan­ford thought “white­space”  should be replaced with “emp­ty space” because it “assigns val­ue con­no­ta­tions based on col­or (white = good)”.
No, it refers to the part of a page that does not include typ­ing or writing.
It might also refer to the appar­ent gaps in the men­tal­i­ty of those for whom umbrage super­sedes com­mon sense. See­ing offence where none is intend­ed, or need be tak­en, doesn’t accom­plish any­thing, so do your homework.

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