Document Type

Editorial

Authors

Sarah Allisot

Publication Title

The Maine Campus

Publication Date

4-16-2018

Abstract/ Summary

The language we use matters, regardless of how small individual words seem in the moment. It’s too easy to disconnect from a place of privilege and safety and ask, "Who cares?” The answer to that misguided question is people — living, breathing people who face aggression because we let coined phrases and words come out before really thinking about them. And that’s the best scenario. There are always those incidences where language is used as a weapon, meant to degrade or devalue certain people with the powerful backing of social context. Words don’t translate in a vacuum, free from our social landscape. That’s why searching for the “real” definition of a word in the dictionary is nothing more than a ploy distracting from the real point — that words have multiple meanings, and many of them aren’t pretty.

Comments

Content captured from The Maine Campus website by by Kimberly Sawtelle, Library Specialist CLIII, on January 17, 2021.

Identifier

Racial Justice_Maine Campus_2021_01_17l

Version

publisher's version of the published document

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