Reflections on Diversity – Time to Get Real: The Lesson of Language

Bedford-Embraces-Diversity_Impressions from follow up Anti-Semitism meetings

Get real!
For real?
Wow, That’s a real bargain!
Is that your real mother?
Are you a real Native American?

By Claudia A. Fox Tree

Language has power. It has the power to communicate humor, questions, information, and understanding. It can also communicate sarcasm, ignorance, misinformation, and misunderstanding. How could the person who raised you not be your real mother? Asking, about a “biological parent” is a different question. Why would people who just identified as Native American be questioned as to whether they are “real”? Where is the questioner getting their information to make this sort of judgment? How someone is defining (or stereotyping) Native Americans can come out in the questions being asked. Language is one small area where we, as individuals, have to power to create positive change, today, this minute, if we choose to accept the challenge.

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The challenge is that we don’t know what we don’t know. There is a previous history with certain words that many of us have the option of not paying attention to, ignoring, or not noticing. Being aware of the words we use is not about being “politically correct,” it is about understanding how language has incredible importance to the people who have had to live with words describing them and their culture, while knowing a cultural, historical, and emotional context above and beyond how the greater society views and uses the word in a particular time and space. That’s why the n-word is not appropriate now. That’s why women are not called “wenches” anymore. That’s why putting the child first, as in “child with special needs,” is more respectful than “disabled child.”

Several weeks ago, the School/Community subgroup that grew out of the Anti-Semitic forums, met to discuss “next steps” that Bedford parents and community members can take to support the schools’ efforts to build cultural proficiency within the schools. I volunteered to reach out to the Bedford community in order to gather information about language. The language used in curriculum, schools, media, and related conversations directly affects historically oppressed groups and continues to marginalize them to this day.

Here is the problem. We can make educated guesses, but we don’t know all the words and phrases that are problematic, offensive, ignorant, or even hateful to particular groups. While groups are neither monolithic nor static, and individuals often have their own preferences, there is much to learn by asking. Therefore, we are asking for community input in this process. I have created a survey tool to help collect and organize responses. Results will be shared with the School/Community subgroup to inform the work of creating cultural competency.

The survey has four questions that I’ve listed below with examples from my own culture (Native American) to model what we are looking for.

  • What name do you prefer for your group? For Indigenous People of the Americas, this means identifying folks by their nation (Wampanoag) or region (Woodland), but not as the general “Indian” because that word now refers to people from India and was a misnomer even back in 1492. Even “Native American” is problematic because anyone and everyone born in the United States is a native American. “First Nations” and “Indigenous People of the Western Hemisphere Before 1492” are better, and useful in establishing the group to be discussed, but common in Canada or cumbersome. What a common expression does is highlight the issue for discussion, so an informed decision can be made about how to refer to Indigenous People of the Americas. In the best case scenario, using the specific Nation’s name whenever possible is best.
  • What words in literature and media have created problematic issues? These are the words that are seen and heard in textbooks, novels, movies, commercials, and cartoons, to name a few areas. For Native People, they include words like “Tonto,” “primitive,” and “Westward Expansion.” These words make us sound stupid, unintelligent, and focus on the colonizer’s perspective in our own land. They can be a problem because of the emotions that may be triggered. The words “legend” and “myth” are also often associated with indigenous groups. The problem here is that our creation stories are called legends, but other people’s creation stories are called names like the Bible, the Qur’an, and the Torah. Our oral stories passed on by ancestors through the generations are just a legitimate as the ones that were written down and deserve to be respected in the same way.
  • What common expressions are offensive, inaccurate, or inappropriate? Some expressions have become so commonplace that it is easy to overlook their origins and implications. For example, “low man on the totem pole” and “sit Indian style.” Clearly, these expressions refer to Native People and it behooves us to find alternatives, such as, “newcomer/rookie” and “criss-cross applesauce.”
  • What words are meaningful to the culture and important to know in order to be sensitive and aware? Knowing these words would help build respect, cross-cultural competency, and healthy conversations about indigenous culture. “AIM” refers to the American Indian Movement, “smudging” is a smoke ceremony used to cleanse the spirit, “Tisquantum” is Squanto’s real name, Diné” is what the Navajo call themselves, and “regalia” is more appropriate than “costume” (which you wear when you pretend to be someone else in a play or for Halloween).

Language has the power be an ally or to put someone down, but to not even think about how words perpetuate sarcasm, ignorance, misinformation, and misunderstanding that can cause hurt and pain to someone else is the worse thing of all. We all can benefit from building our cultural capacity and learning how to be more sensitive in the words we are using.

Here is the link to the survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CultureLanguage

Please forward the link to any and all relevant constituents, organizations, and groups within the Bedford community. You may take also the survey several times in order to represent multiple group memberships. The survey has four questions that I’ve listed above. Please consider taking the survey to help the School/Community subgroup better understand what language is important for educators to know as they look at curriculum through the lens of culture.

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