Literary Silence

I am fascinated by the idea Jason Stanley spoke of using linguistics to silence people; his example about when one chooses the phrase "tax relief" versus "tax cut".

It wasn't exactly a new concept. It is often used when oppressing whole groups. For instance, labelling women "bossy" or "needy" instead of "a leader" or "honest" transforms their very real struggles and the value they contribute to society into something that can be/is a mockery. By labelling people of color, specifically black people, as merely "angry", politicians undermine their justified frustrations with the norms of society.

Something very similar has been happening not only on Bryn Mawr's campus, but on that of the University of Missouri.

At Bryn Mawr, there were recently a great number of flyers put all over campus- on every bulletin board, on every door, in every hallway, there were flyers. They called attention to the racial profiling done by Campus Safety officers; they pointed out the lack of safety guaranteed to people of color on Bryn Mawr's campus, and the unequal treatment between students of color and white students. Mawrtyrs as a whole tend to label the campus as a safe space, one where everyone can exist freely, but that is an ignorant assumption. We are just as affected as any other place in the United States by our history of intense discrimination and prejudice. Our very blood runs with the memories of past transgressions against non-white bodies. Rather than recognize as a whole the immediate and all-reaching import of the messages made by these flyers, the immediate reaction was to target them and tear them down, as they went against posting policy. By first labelling the flyers as against the honor code and posting policy's mission to keep clear discourse between BMC students at all time, it was ridiculously easy to discount the very valid issues raised by the flyers themselves. Through using language that condemns the poster makers, their message is totally silenced. However, this is by no means as shocking a silencing as the one occurring on the campus of the University of Missouri (Mizzou). Currently, my understanding is that there has been rampant racism boiling over on the Mizzou campus, leading to white power rallies and very real death threats being made against the Black students of Mizzou (for tomorrow the twelfth, in particular). These fears have been primarily dismissed by their safety officials, who have also not broken up any of said white-power rallies. Their concerns have been repeatedly dismissed as paranoid, and without evidence to back them up. The linguistics of such talk take away from the legitimacy their fear deserves and prevents real action from being taken to protect students of color.