{"id":3059,"date":"2023-05-25T21:01:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T21:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3059"},"modified":"2023-05-25T22:11:39","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T22:11:39","slug":"at-home-with-politically-incorrect-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3059","title":{"rendered":"At home with politically incorrect language"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/at-home-with-politically-incorrect-language\/<\/a><\/p>\n

I suppose I\u2019ll be accused of being unkind, uncouth or maybe even unhinged, but why in the world does the La Crosse Tribune feel compelled to write about the \u201cunhoused\u201d?<\/p>\n

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The Tribune uses the word as both an adjective and a noun. They write about \u201cunhoused people,\u201d the \u201cunhoused community,\u201d the \u201cunhoused population\u201d and, also, just the plain old \u201cunhoused.\u201d<\/p>\n

What they don\u2019t write about any longer, at least in the story I saw dated May 21, is \u201cthe homeless\u201d \u2014 a term which some people now consider derogatory.<\/p>\n

Neither the reporter who wrote the story<\/a> (it\u2019s actually a pretty good story about the large homeless population in La Crosse) or the executive editor of the paper returned my call. So I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re among those people. But I do know that the label \u201chomeless\u201d now implies that one is \u201cless than\u201d and that it \u201cundermines self-esteem and progressive change,\u201d according to the website for an organization called Unhoused.org.<\/p>\n

The term \u201cunhoused,\u201d on the other hand, \u201cimplies there is a moral and social assumption that everyone should be housed in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

A story<\/a> at the website Planetizen, in the meantime, tells us that some argue the term \u201chomeless \u2026 dehumanizes the people experiencing homelessness and flattens their identity into one stigmatized characteristic.\u201d It can carry \u201cbaggage that brings with it connotations of personal failings, drug use and other stigmatizing assumptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reporter for the Tribune did not, to her credit, avoid reporting that \u201cmany residents\u201d at a recent La Crosse Park Board meeting \u201cshared experiences of cleaning up trash and needles, witnessing people urinating, defecating or using drugs in public.\u201d Nor did she describe any of those actions as personal achievements.<\/p>\n

She also reported on a scarcity of emergency shelter beds and transitional housing and \u201cpermanent supportive housing\u201d \u2014 important public policy issues that deserve to be discussed.<\/p>\n

Homelessness is a tough issue and one that is tough to generalize about. A couple winters ago, I looked out our apartment window on a very cold winter night and saw a homeless person sleeping under I-794 in Milwaukee. I was afraid she was going to quite literally freeze to death, so I went to a hotel about a block away and paid for a room and walked over and told her \u2014 lying there on the frozen ground in a sleeping bag \u2014 that I was afraid she was going to die.<\/p>\n

I told her she could walk down to the hotel and they would give her a pre-paid room.<\/p>\n

Her response: No.<\/p>\n

I presume she had her reasons. I also presume many other homeless people would have gladly taken the warm room. Beyond that, I try not to have too many presumptions about a really complex problem.<\/p>\n

What bothers me a little is when the mainstream media adopts the terminology of lefty activists who presume the rest of us are insensitive dolts betrayed by the archaic language used by 99.9% of the world.<\/p>\n

Or maybe they\u2019re just following the increasingly sanctimonious Associated Press Stylebook, which doesn\u2019t mandate use of \u201cunhoused\u201d or ban the use of \u201chomeless\u201d as an adjective but does tell reporters to \u201cavoid the dehumanizing collective noun the homeless<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2022-2024 AP Stylebook, by the way, has a whole new chapter on what they call \u201cinclusive storytelling\u201d meant to help reporters overcome \u201cunconscious biases\u201d and be \u201csensitive about specific words and phrases.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem is that once a reporter and a paper adopt the language of the left, no matter how good the story is, they are putting their fingers on the scale, using language no normal person ever does, preaching.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the mainstream media that wants to prove it is couth and kind. The UW-Madison Information Technology area actually felt compelled to issue a list of discriminatory words like \u201cwhitelist,\u201d and \u201cgray beard\u201d and \u201cmaster.\u201d That\u2019s no longer a master file, mind you, it\u2019s a primary file. Unless, I guess, it\u2019s inside a plantation.<\/p>\n

One of my colleagues pointed out, in the meantime, that apparently nobody commits suicide at UW-Madison anymore.<\/p>\n

The \u201cInclusive Language Guide\u201d there says to \u201cavoid using the phrase committed suicide\u201d<\/em> because the verb \u201ccommit\u201d \u201ccan imply a criminal act\u201d and laws against suicide have been repealed in many places.<\/p>\n

I have a couple great one-liners that I could insert here but don\u2019t want to commit a faux pas<\/em> \u2014 and get locked up for it.<\/p>\n

Once somebody on the left issues a proper language pronouncement, everyone else on the left feels compelled to engage in the same virtue-signaling. Pretty soon everybody is jumping in, showing how good and decent and understanding they are \u2014 and how uncouth and unkind everyone else is.<\/p>\n

A policy analyst for the ACLU, for example, was quoted as saying that the word \u201chomeless\u201d has become inseparable from a \u201ctoxic narrative\u201d that blames and demonizes people, implies they are dangerous or devious.<\/p>\n

Either that, or \u2014 well \u2014 they\u2019re homeless.<\/p>\n

Mike Nichols is the President of the Badger Institute. Permission to reprint is granted as long as the author and Badger Institute are properly cited.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The post At home with politically incorrect language<\/a> appeared first on Badger Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/at-home-with-politically-incorrect-language\/ I suppose I\u2019ll be accused of being unkind, uncouth…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-badger-institute"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3059"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3062,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3059\/revisions\/3062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}