Offense as context-free grammar

Yesterday, SC had occasion to address the matter of potentially offensive language, and the conditions under which its usage might be appropriate. Implicit in the discussion was the idea that the words in question were mutually understood to have offensive content. However, this was apparently a gross oversight on my part.

Today, Andrew Sullivan mentions two stories, one of which SC hopes is apocryphal, which just blow that assumption to pieces. The first one concerns a story in the L.A. Times which was written to contain the string "pro-life" in an article which had nothing whatever to do with the politics of abortion. Apparently, the L.A. Times' style guide prohibits the use of that phrase on the grounds that it is insensitive to supporters of abortion, and requires their writers to use "anti-choice". No comment is offered on whether the policy is symmetric and requires not only the avoidance of "pro-choice" but also an "anti" label to similarly avoid antagonizing opponents; Google turns up 112 hits for "pro-choice", and 59 hits for "pro-life" on the Times' website, so whatever the policy is, it's not as absolute as the article linked to by Sullivan implies. Regardless of one's position on abortion, however, it ought to be possible for people of good faith on both sides to acknowledge that the "pro-X" labels are intentionally designed to carry political meanings. So we'll move on to the next story. Sullivan recounts the tale:

It reminds me of the occasion when a newspaper decided to remove all usage of the word "black" from its copy, when referring to African-Americans. it was deemed too offensive a term. Everything was fine until some tired copy-editor lazily edited an economics column. Suddenly, the federal budget moved from red ink "into the African-American."

For the most part, SC is sympathetic to the notion of calling people by what they want to be called by. However, in an effort to dictate the terms of discussion, some people move well beyond common sense. As soon as SC read this comment, it reminded him of a story that made the rounds in 2002, when BET -- a media outlet that ought to be more aware of proper terminology for people of African descent than any other -- wrote about a U.S. bobsledder as being the "first African American, from any country, to win gold in the Winter Olympics". The original story appears here; although it appears to have been corrected without notice, a comment at the bottom of the page indicates the material which was originally present. A Google search turns up only about a dozen hits as supporting evidence.

Clearly, what the three stories all have in common is that they cover people have managed to internalize self-censorship to such a degree that they are no longer capable of recognizing the plain meaning of what they are saying. Returning to the abortion story, it would be a matter of overt bias for a newspaper to respect the sensitivities of one side of a debate while ignoring the other. But in the "African-American" cases, nobody is disputing that the people being referred to prefer that label. It's just that the fear of giving offense has so overtaken other concerns about language use that some people now have to delete some words wherever they find them, whether or not they even carry an offensive meaning.

Comments

[Virge]

I'm reminded of an instruction from my company's marketing communications department around fifteen years ago. We had to remove the words 'abort' and 'aborted' from software error and status messages since they may upset pregnant women. Fortunately the English language has a range of good alternatives.

[Rachel]

Abort, Retry, Fail? Eek.

[ben]

I don't know if I'd call it "internalizing self-censorship". I think it's more likely in the example you gave that the writer just thinks "African-American" == "black". Much like for some people, "Diet Pepsi" == "Diet Coke".