elizabeth
New Yorker
hey- i dont usually post here so i am not sure if this is the best forum to start this discussion, but here goes.
I listen to NPR a lot, because my job is "Science on the Road." Hence I am on the road everyday and listen to talk radio to stay awake...
today i was listening to reports about the 2000 census long forms. There was a dude from the Brookings Institure analyzing the data that said avg US incomes were increasing, but there was still a high number of americans living under the poverty line. he stated the cause of this was immigration.
He said something like "immigrants come to the US and often have little education and are...well they are poor."
And that's what got me thinking. I am very sensitive to word choice (sometimes.) For some reason, his statement "the ARE poor" bothered me because he made their economic status part of their identity. I used to study eugenics and early 20th c. genetics ideas, and the fact that demographic data can often be confused with the "nature" of a certain group is a worry always sort of lurking about my mind.
i worry the same thing when i go into schools and hear students say that "slaves followed the big dipper to head north..." Is it picky? or more appropriate to say "people who were enslaved?"
I dont like the fact that in many textbooks, children will see photos of black people from the late 19th century and then see the word "slave" and those two things will be linked! I would rather have the children think of them as "enslaved people" but not "slaves." I worry kids and others will forget to or stop thinking of them as people.
is this too picky? am i the only person that worries about stuff like this?
I listen to NPR a lot, because my job is "Science on the Road." Hence I am on the road everyday and listen to talk radio to stay awake...
today i was listening to reports about the 2000 census long forms. There was a dude from the Brookings Institure analyzing the data that said avg US incomes were increasing, but there was still a high number of americans living under the poverty line. he stated the cause of this was immigration.
He said something like "immigrants come to the US and often have little education and are...well they are poor."
And that's what got me thinking. I am very sensitive to word choice (sometimes.) For some reason, his statement "the ARE poor" bothered me because he made their economic status part of their identity. I used to study eugenics and early 20th c. genetics ideas, and the fact that demographic data can often be confused with the "nature" of a certain group is a worry always sort of lurking about my mind.
i worry the same thing when i go into schools and hear students say that "slaves followed the big dipper to head north..." Is it picky? or more appropriate to say "people who were enslaved?"
I dont like the fact that in many textbooks, children will see photos of black people from the late 19th century and then see the word "slave" and those two things will be linked! I would rather have the children think of them as "enslaved people" but not "slaves." I worry kids and others will forget to or stop thinking of them as people.
is this too picky? am i the only person that worries about stuff like this?
Lemonite!
