Words matter: the ones we choose and those we don’t when seeking to convey information, especially about social and political issues.

They can transmit thoughts clearly, or, chosen haphazardly, can muddy the waters of communication, confusing the listener or reader in ways that undermine the purpose of speaking or writing them in the first place.

If we pick words that are overwrought or exaggerations for the thing we’re describing — like analogizing virtually everything we don’t like to Nazism or enslavement — we run the risk of losing all credibility, and deservedly so.

As in, “Asking me to wear a mask in your business is how it starts — soon you’ll be making me wear a yellow star and sending me to an extermination camp.”

Or, “Oh, you’re telling me I have to get a vaccine? What’s next? Are you going to make me pick cotton?”

Or, “Oh, you eat meat? So, you’re like a serial killer then — good to know.”

If we deploy words that are too understated, however, we run the opposite risk of minimizing real problems in a way that dangerously downplays the awfulness in need of being addressed.

And while we often talk of the former scenario, criticizing our political opponents for using incendiary language, it strikes me that linguistic delicacy is just as dangerous and every bit as common.

How “good people” undermine change with passive language

I’ve noticed it often, even in progressive circles, where those in question are deeply committed to social change and the empowerment of marginalized peoples.

Rather than using straightforward language and the active voice, we sometimes deploy passive verbiage that mystifies the social dynamics we’re trying to point out and change.

For instance, how often have you heard someone use the term “underprivileged” to define those at the bottom of the nation’s economic and social hierarchies? Perhaps you’ve used it yourself? I’m sure I have too.

Or “underrepresented?”

Or someone referring to marginalized groups as “underserved populations?”

What do these terms convey?

Passivity.

It’s just, hmmm, there’s privilege, and then, there, somewhere below it, lies those people — the ones who are under it.

Nobody did anything to anyone. No action was taken that created the binary of privilege and the beneath-ness of it all, yet there it is, as if by coincidence.

Fascinating.

So too, with underserved or underrepresented: there’s service and representation up here, and then down there, under it, is you. Pity that, but again, we have no earthly idea how that happened nor even a reason to inquire.

The terms are passive. The social dynamics they describe have no apparent predicates, which is convenient for those whose actions might have brought them about. Because using such language makes it much harder to correct whatever injustice the terms might otherwise point us towards fixing.

If people are beneath privilege, service, and representation, but we don’t have to think about the forces of racism or economic exploitation that produce their status on the bottom, we will, at best, come to think of such folks as supplicants for charity. We will certainly not seek to undo the systemic and deliberate policies or practices that brought about their misery.

Or what about the ubiquitous term “at-risk?”

As in, “our agency serves ‘at-risk’ youth and families?”

What are they at risk from?

Does it matter?

Of course.

No one is just “at-risk” generically, as if from some free-floating thing called “danger.” People are at-risk from impoverishment, racial discrimination, various forms of neglect and abuse, inadequate health services, underfunded education, and pollution, among other things.

And none of those are passive. They are things that some do to others, either in families or societies, because of the choices people make, whether individually or collectively.

Speaking of “at-risk” people but not specifying the risk factors to which they are subjected is again to soft-pedal real problems and make it harder to correct them.

There’s no “under” without an “over,” but we often ignore this

Additionally, terms like “underprivileged,” “underrepresented,” or “underserved” are relative concepts. In fact, they have no meaning except in relation to their opposites.

And what are those opposites?

Overprivileged, overrepresented, and overserved.

But these terms are far less commonly heard, if at all, in polite discourse.

In fact, until a few years ago, the term “overprivileged” wasn’t even recognized by online dictionaries as a real word. I would often write it, only to be confronted with that little red line underneath the word, informing me that I was making things up and should probably learn to speak English.

But if there is an underprivileged, there must be an overprivileged, by definition. That’s not politics or ideology. It’s grammar.

There is no under without an over. But how often have you heard people use those latter, relative terms?

Not nearly as often as their “under-” whatever counterparts.

Why?

Probably because if we start acknowledging the overprivileged, we’d have to specify who these people were and how they got all that extra privilege, opportunity, service, and representation that others sorely lack.

And when it comes to people with excess, they might like to flaunt it on Instagram, but they hate others pointing it out at tax time, or any time where doing so is about questioning how they obtained it rather than praising them for it or presuming them superior by virtue of its possession.

Yet, if we’re going to ensure that opportunity is equitably available to all and that the existing maldistribution of it is remedied, we’ll need to say what we mean and mean what we say.

That means:

• Using the active voice to describe injustice — not just with the examples above but others too: impoverished versus poor, enriched versus rich, or enslaved versus slave, for example;
• Discussing the “over” for every “under.” If we use words like underprivileged, so be it — but only if we do so as part of a relational discussion in which those with excess advantage are pointed out as well; and finally,
• Specifying the risks to which people in “at-risk” groups are subjected so that those seeking to alleviate those risks can have a clear understanding of what they’re confronting.

Though this may all sound purely semantic, these are far from trivial matters. The language we choose dictates the direction in which we’ll go when it comes to public policy and the level of urgency others place on a subject when you speak of it.

So while we should avoid alarmist terminology that virtually no one will be able to hear — as with Holocaust analogies or similar examples — we cannot afford to minimize the active components of societal pain.

Things don’t just happen. They get done. That’s true whether perpetrating injustice or seeking to remedy it.

And our language can tell us volumes about whether or not we are up to the latter task.

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This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.

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