Monster Mash

Languages change over time. And, occasionally, in real time; or so it seems. For example, the definition of "racism" is in a state of flux. When I was young, it was more or less understood that racism referred to an active dislike, if not outright hatred of, one or more groups of people based on their, well, race. The actual number of races and their boundaries was never really all that well defined, but if someone felt that all Asians were shifty or all Jews were greedy and dishonest, they were a prime candidate for the label.

Presently, there is a sizable constituency, mainly on the political Left, for the idea that racism is a form of wrongthink about race. The actual number of races and their boundaries are still not at all well defined, but if someone feels that Black Americans are actually in a somewhat decent place, or that there are broad cultural concepts common to all Latin Americans, they're a prime candidate for the new label.

But the old definition isn't actually dead yet. Unlike "terrific" which has pretty much lost any connection to "terror" over the past 150 years or so, the shift of the term racism from active hatred of a group of people to a systemic social force isn't yet complete. And so for a lot of people, the terms racist and racism still conjure up monsters, like literal Nazis, the old Skinhead movement or Ku Klux Klansmen; people who one would expect to do genuinely terrible things to people, simply for the crime of being different.

And I suspect that this monstrosity that lingers on the term is a large part of the reason why it's become so difficult to talk about race in the United States. A person who considers themselves "woke" may call out someone else for being racist for their support of something seen as cultural appropriation, but that someone else hears themselves being lumped in with the 20th century's worst villains. There might be many degrees of racism, but in day-to-day language one word to rule them all simply makes for confusion.

Not to mention shutting down conversations. Two parties to a conversation may realize that one of them is simply defending what they've come to think of as a neutral meritocracy. But if the only way to describe that is with the same words one would use to describe someone who's open bigotry allows them to assault or even kill someone, it's going to lead to a lot of misunderstandings.

But it's the nature of the beast. Language refuses to remain static, otherwise, modern English might still bear a passing resemblance to it's medieval roots. Eventually, I suspect, the transition will be complete, and racist will have lost much of its sting, that having been loaded onto another term for monster. But in the meantime, an unwillingness to recognize that language isn't the same thing to everyone will continue to torpedo attempts to communicate.