Rewriting History and Who You Are Allowed to Be

Towards the end of July university watchdog group Campus Reform ran a story about the University of New Hampshire’s “Bias-Free Language Guide,” purported to “create dialogues of inclusion where all of us feel comfortable and welcomed.” The guide went on to list words and phrases, divided under various categories, as “problematic” and “preferred.” Included amongst the terms UNH decided ought to be avoided was “American.” Their gripe was that there are two entire continents called “America” and that use of the moniker “assumes the U.S. is the only country inside these two continents.”

Really? I wonder if Foster et al. are aware of any other countries within the borders of this pair of continents whose official name includes the word America? I am especially intrigued about this particular portion of their lengthy introduction:

[T]he first step toward our goal is an awareness of any bias in our daily language. As we begin to understand bias we explore the truths of hierarchy and oppression. When we free ourselves of bias, we are thus affirming identities that differ from our own. When we do not affirm another person’s identity, we are characterizing an individual as “less than” and other”. [sic] This makes them invisible, and for some, it feels like a form of violence.

Let’s unpack that a little bit. As a citizen of the only country in all of North or South America whose name includes the word America, I have throughout my lifetime identified as American not merely as a matter of convenience, our land being the only one thus called, but also because our heritage and history run deep into my very being. It informs my entire outlook on life, how I am to behave towards others, my perception of justice and spelling lots of words without an extraneous u. Of course, I’m sure those whose humour also sees the absurdity in all this feel their own history in their beings, and I don’t begrudge them that. However, the reality remains that as the new kids on the block, our experiment with freedom was untried until we showed up, and that means something to me.

It also meant something to those who at one time thought of themselves as British, even long after they began to tire of the hierarchy and oppression they were forced to exist under. One might think the fight for their affirmation of identity would resound with the authors of the aforementioned guide: the colonists lived, after all, under circumstances entirely different to those in the motherland; their unique needs and environments resulted in a wholly different people. In the end they wanted to be viewed as distinct because they were. What lay behind the truth and hierarchy of oppression here was not action that stemmed or resulted from language, but rather a brute philosophy of distance that viewed people as revenue because they had no voice in Parliament. The invisible colonists, and later Americans, were indeed visited by “a form of violence” that sought to strip their freedoms, whatever they were labeled. But they chose to call themselves American: it signified their struggle for the future, for our future, and my respect for their sacrifices is part of the reason I happily continue to think of my person as did my forebears of themselves: American.

But somehow my own perception of myself and how I came to be me is offensive to others? How did it happen that a committee of people who self elected to determine not only what words are exclusive - “problematic”- but also select the specific groups who are required to alter their very identities to satisfy a form of correctness that erases the histories of these people—how did that panel become the harbingers of the New Language Order? This committee-speak that ostensibly seeks to unite actually promotes ignorance of history, wiping Vespucci off the slate and doing anything but create a sense of feeling “comfortable and welcome.” It tells me that who I am is unwanted because my history and country share a name with a larger land mass that we happen to be of. How can this erasure be at all compatible with the committee’s desire to avoid invisibility and hierarchy amongst people?

This is only one of a number of inconsistencies to be seen within the verbiage of this allegedly “bias-free language guide,” and in fairness to UNH President Mark W. Huddleston, who issued a statement once the guide began to go viral (in the space of about one day, I might add) and he was made aware of it, there was also discovered to be no consistency in the over one million UNH web pages of which ones reflected actual policy and those simply providing a soap box for individuals with control issues. Hasson followed up his original Campus Reform with an update discussing dissatisfied responses from various leaders, all of whom agreed with Huddleston’s comments:

I am troubled by many things in the language guide, especially the suggestion that the use of the term ‘American’ is misplaced or offensive…It is ironic that what was probably a well-meaning effort to be ‘sensitive’ proves offensive to many people, myself included.

The guide was later deleted altogether. While I do believe Huddleston did the right thing by removing the unconstitutional set of speech codes, I am troubled by the implications of its disappearance and how those who will in the future read about the flap might perceive the incident in the absence of what got everyone all riled up. For instance, Ross penned a blame-the-messenger article for The Washington Post in which she comes down on the side of the guide’s authors in terms of how enforceable it really is when she writes that, “In truth, the guide makes its goals and nonexistent on-campus authority clear.” She goes on to assert that “there is something strongly implied by all those quotation marks…[a]nd it is that a tyrannical kind of forced sensitivity rules college campuses.” Perhaps Ross only reads her own newspaper, because in these days of “trigger warnings” and the perpetually offended who demand bans and expulsions, and are afforded an audience and often accommodation—conditions widely reported elsewhere—it is difficult and disingenuous to refute the claim that the engineering of language occurs all too often at American universities and colleges.

She also distorts the point by turning it on its ear, critically bemoaning Hasson’s piece for

mak[ing] no mention at all of the way language can sometimes be both emblematic of and contribute to a problem, and it offers no examples of words most people have stopped using for that reason (“retarded,” “mulatto,” “gimp,” etc.)

(Wait, why all the quotation marks?) Ross demands Hasson provide examples of what he isn’t writing about and seems to miss a point she herself touches upon when she refers to words that “most people have stopped using.” Real language evolution occurs when society organically distances itself from offensive terms, as a result of naturally shifting patterns of usage that may or may not encompass a small amount of deliberation that creeps nowhere near a policing approach. This is not what is laid out in the speech codes but rather a manual for imposing thought control on people in a society increasingly utilizing fear of negative labels (“racist”) and in some instances actual punitive measures and destruction of careers and lives—much of this frequently getting started by a single tweet noticed by a key figure with a large voice. It only gets worse from there when the crowd goes into mob hyperdrive, claiming to identify with freedom when they speak of “faculty training” in this context and nodding appreciatively at the guide’s amiable-sounding claim that “[e]ach step of inclusion moves us closer to a full democracy.”

My question at this point pertains to whether I will be identified in their democratic “language of inclusion” as a wolf or a sheep.

As the noise revs up and new or impartial observers try to assess what passes for reality - without the primary document to do it – we edge that much closer to the re-writing and erasure of history before the ink has had time to dry. One can disagree with Hasson or question his reporting, and while I certainly cannot speak for him I doubt he has a problem with this so long as reasonably intelligent readers are willing to refer to the same source he did, which fortunately will be widely available in this struggle thanks to our new BFF, the screen shot. While the new Americans of revolutionary days wrote in invisible ink to spread their information to crucial parties, erasing ours can be used as a tool of tyranny when it is no longer available to question. President Huddleston, fortunately, has stood against the guide, left his own mark as to how he views it, and I thank him.

I should probably also thank the authors of this pompous piece of oppressive directive because, in reality, they did provide a wake up call – magnified by Hasson – when they themselves privileged a massively disturbing and key objective by inserting a Whorf quotation into the guide’s opening lines. It is an ideal imperative we consider with great care and make a conscious choice about how dismissive of it we really want to be:

Language shapes the way we think and determines what we can think about.

Update: To link to a complete screenshot set of the "Bias-Free Language Guide," which no longer appears on the UNH website, click here.