The following reflection was written and shared by Dr. Kate DeConinck, Teaching Professor, Department of Theology and Religious Studies.
In 1943, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt published an article entitled “We Refugees” in a small Jewish periodical. Like many Jews, Arendt had fled Nazi-occupied Germany in the mid-1930s, and her article describes the discomfort that those who had recently arrived in the United States felt at being labeled “refugees.” She begins the article: “In the first place, we don’t like to be called ‘refugees.’ We ourselves call each other ‘newcomers’ or ‘immigrants.’[…] A refugee used to be a person driven to seek refuge because of some act committed or some political opinion held. Well, it is true we have had to seek refuge; but we committed no acts and most of us never dreamt of having any radical political opinion” (69). The stigma that came with being labeled refugees had deep psychological and existential consequences for the Jewish American community, as evidenced in a story that Arendt shares about a man named Mr. Cohn, who goes so far out of his way to assimilate to his new country that he loses all sense of who he is.
This past spring, I taught FYW 150: Rhetorics of Fear, Hope, and Belonging in the U.S., and one of the first readings that I assigned to my students was Arendt’s article. To be honest, I was not sure how our class discussion surrounding this piece would unfold—this was my first time teaching a course geared exclusively toward first-year students, and I wondered if they would grasp the meaning of Arendt’s prose or find her claims interesting. To my delight, what unfolded in our classroom was a meaningful dialogue about the power of labels. We talked about the challenges that Jews coming to America in the post-World War II era faced and how conventional ways of framing identity and inclusion (which were—are often still are today—derived from the concept of nationhood) only contributed to their hardships. We also read the late Eddie Ellis’s “An Open Letter to Our Friends on the Question of Language” aloud together. Ellis was an activist who spent 25 years in New York’s maximum security prisons before going on to co-found a think tank that advocates for the formerly incarcerated. In this letter, he writes about the damage that labels like criminal, inmate, prisoner, felon and so forth can have upon men and women who are trying to forge new paths forward in their lives. Ellis claims that terms like these are “devoid of humanness” and only serve to portray the formerly incarcerated as “things,” or embodiments of their crimes, rather than people (1). He encourages his audience to reconsider the language that they use, writing: “[we believe] that if we can get…publications, organizations and individuals like you to stop using the old offensive language and simply refer to us as ‘people,’ we will have achieved a significant step forward in our life giving struggle to be recognized as the human beings we are. We have made our mistakes, yes, but we have also paid or are paying our debts to society” (2).
Our conversation about these readings highlighted how the discourse we use in our everyday lives has real implications for the ways in which we imagine the world around us as well as our relationships with others. “Changemaking” can be a big concept to wrap our minds around, often conjuring notions of large-scale activism or fearless dedication to empowering underserved communities. But, as our dialogue in class revealed, Changemaking can also take form at a more mundane level. The ways in which we speak about other people in our everyday lives can also serve to effect change and promote social justice.
To follow up on this conversion in class, I asked my students to complete a short writing assignment for inclusion in their weekly writing portfolios. Students were tasked with picking one word that is commonly used to describe a group of people in the United States today and then write a short response to unpack the weight that word carries. With their permission, I share some “snapshots” from their work here:
● One of my students wrote his response about use of the word “slut” in America today. He observed that the way this word is commonly deployed is wedded to the idea that women’s sexuality is shameful and should not be visible in the public sphere. He wrote that use of the word slut “discourages women from being comfortable in their own bodies” and only serves to fuel “cycles of oppressive patriarchy” in our country today.
● Hailee Litchfield wrote about the connotations that the label “widow” carries in the United States, as reflected in her own mother’s experiences after losing her husband. Instead of empowering and supporting her mother, many people tended to assume that she was fragile, needy, and helpless. “Women like my other do not want pity from others,” Hailee wrote. “They want others to believe that they can get through this difficult time so that they feel empowered to move forward with greater confidence.”
● Shelby Little reflected on the phrase “illegal alien.” This terminology cultivates a certain perception of immigrants in our society today, she claimed, by generating both fear and distance. She wrote: “if we continue to talk about undocumented humans traveling to the United States as ‘illegal aliens,’ [we will perpetuate the notion that] these people are not actually people, but are creatures from another planet that are dangerous and a threat to public safety.”
● Two other students in my class reflected on labels that carry more subtle but equally significant baggage. Hannah McIntosh wrote about the term “dropout” and the common assumption that a dropout is someone who has willingly left school because of “a lack of intelligence, use of drugs, or unexpected pregnancy.” These stereotypes overshadow more complex realities. In fact, many people are forced to abandon school due to their families’ economic situations, situations of abuse, or other serious obstacles—which is not to say that these individuals are incapable of earning their degrees. Another student wrote about the label “handicapped/disabled,” which often lumps people with diverse life experiences and histories under a broad term. This label also says a lot about the sorts of “abilities” that our society sees as valuable or normative.
I share these selections from my students’ work with the hope that their ideas might inspire further critical reflection and dialogue about how to promote Changemaking through small but intentional changes in our everyday discourse.
Sources
Hannah Arendt, “We Refugees,” in Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile, edited by Marc Robinson (Boston: Faber & Faber, 1994): 110-119.
Eddie Ellis, “An Open Letter to Our Friends on the Question of Language,” Center for NuLeadership on Urban Solutions, 2007, https://cmjcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/CNUS-AppropriateLanguage.pdf
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