Racist Language and References Permeate Our Speech and Promote Inequality

In our everyday conversations, many of us use words or phrases that have racist meanings or derivations, even if we don’t intend our speech to be racist.

Many of these words or phrases have worked their way into our common vernacular in a covert way and by their use promote inequality.

Just a few examples are “master bedroom or master bathroom,” “blacklisting” someone, “uppity,” “black mark,” “sold down the river,” or “black sheep of the family” all have their derivations during slavery or reconstruction.

The list of these types of terms is voluminous.

The use of phrases of this nature perpetuate the master/slave dynamic and covertly and subtlety advance systemic racism through our normal speech, says Dr. Kalvin Harvell, professor of sociology at Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Michigan.

Dr. Harvell has been the president of the Michigan Sociological Society and his is the founder of Harvell and Associates, an educational consulting firm.

While the bulk of our racist speech is directed toward African Americans, we do have other phrases that target other ethnicities. For example, the term “gypped” is a verbal slam towards gypsies (or Romani people). “Paddy wagon” is a reference to Irish immigrants being lawless and arrested.

These racist terms also can be coded and merge into our lexicon. For example, often the media, uses the term “urban” to mean inner-city, poor, and black. If we want to refer to a gentrified part of a city, we refer to it as “metropolitan.”

These types of terms not only appear in our daily lexicon, but they also are often used by journalists, thereby perpetuating racial stereotypes and tropes, says Dr. Harvell.

To be anti-racist, he says, one must examine one’s own speech patterns and purge words and phrases that are hurtful and promote inequality.