Keeping the Words Out of Mind and Workplace
If you don’t have the mindset, you will not say the words
Recently, some famous and other not-so-famous people experienced what is called canceling after using charged derogatory words. These are negative terms to describe Asians, Blacks, LGBT, Latinos, Native Americans and more.
People spoke on hot mics or in other situations using terms that led to being immediately dropped by their employers, teams, companies and other social and economic settings. How do you prevent it from happening to you? The answer is simple, do not let any of those words into your lexicon. The reason is not to prevent yourself from being terminated but to understand they have no place in your life in the first place.
I grew up in a large almost homogeneously white, at the time, community in suburban Boston — Weymouth, Massachusetts. In my town, we remember two black families, one native American and one Puerto Rican family of a population of fifty-thousand. I remember one Jew in my high school class. Maybe there were others but that is all we knew in our high school.
My father wrote for the Boston Globe. One of his beats was to cover court-ordered busing in the early to mid-1970s. This was an attempt by the federal government to integrate the Boston schools. The whole process almost tore the city apart. My father was in the midst of it every day. The Globe actually gave him a small plexiglass shield to protect him from rock throwers who hated the newspaper believing it was on the side of the black community.
One night a car drove by the Morrissey Boulevard address of the Globe and fired five shots into the building almost hitting the receptionist. As my father would put the issue — all because of the color of someone’s skin. He hated racism.
My mother never allowed such slurs in the house. So, we grew up without using them. Anytime I heard them, they had a stark shock value to them which turned me off. They are not part of my lexicon.
What do you do when people use them in your presence?
The first step is to make it clear that you do not want to hear the word again. You do not have to be nasty, just straightforward. “Please, don’t use those words in my presence.”
If a person persists then leave whenever the words are used and refrain from associating with the person as much as possible.
If someone is going to tell a joke and has a reputation for using those words make it clear you do not want to hear the joke. “If it’s got a slur, I don’t want to hear it.”
Never use the words yourself because the minute you do, then you become tainted with them.
Those slurs are character words.
They describe the speaker more than anyone they label.
Using a slur does not really give an accurate picture of the target but it does of the speaker. He or she would be what my generation often called an Archie Bunker. Based on the TV character made famous by the late Carroll O’Connor in the TV series All in the Family. Archie Bunker was a blue-collar worker who looked upon others not like him as less than he was. He did not want them in his house or his neighborhood.
The words reflect a complete inability to see people as human beings and instead see them as the labels you put upon them. That is not Denzel, that is a (put label here) named Denzel. The same with Maria or Guilherme or Aisha. The names mean nothing. The slur is the description in the mind of the person who uses them. That is what those words do.
Working in three languages, I learned that everyone has the same desires. They all want a happy, peaceful life and a good place to bring up their children. Books written about and by gangsters, all include stories that even they want a good place to bring up their children. All people regardless of ethnicity want a tranquil life and a good place to bring up a family.
Ethnicity does not change this. Prejudice undermines the understanding that other races and groups want the same thing. The desire to live in a good neighborhood and have a happy family life is universal. It is not unique to any one ethnic group.
When we use labels, we make others into a homogenous group different from us. “They want other things that we would not dream of wanting. They do not care about their children. They live to commit crime that is what makes them happy.” All that kind of thinking is not true.
Propaganda describes enemies having few human values. Consistently false, its purpose is to get the populace of a country to make sure the people hate the national enemy too. I remember learning as a child from a family that had a soldier in the war in Vietnam that the then North Vietnamese did not care about their children, hence they would use them to attack our American soldiers. Granted there may have been child soldiers but that could not describe every Vietnamese family with allegiance to Hanoi at the time.
Do you actually believe that the average family in another country does not value the same things as you? Name any other country and you will find that essentially at its core are people who have basically the same wants and needs you have. They may not all want smartphones and computers but they want to live a happy life and see their children grow up and prosper.
There are exceptions but those are individual; they are not general. There are bad people in every society and every group but that is not a social group issue. There is no racial genetic disposition to be drug dealers or gun runners or even gangsters, none. Every race however has its share of drug dealers, gun runners and gangsters.
What do you do with the employee who uses such language?
What is your company policy? If you do not have one, you need one. Then look at the context. If an employee is describing company policy about what words will not be acceptable on company property then using the words to cite that they are prohibited on company property obviously should not be against company policy.
However, if an employee uses a word and it is a one-time thing. He or she can be counseled and warned against doing it again. The employee can be warned that this is step one in the termination process if it continues. Firing them immediately without such counseling could open the company to a lawsuit.
If an employee uses the word(s) all the time then he or she will need to be terminated. It will be something that will undermine the morale in the company if you do not, even if it will undermine productivity or morale if you do fire the person. In the long run, tolerating the behavior will have a greater detriment than not tolerating it. The problem may not be just that the words are offensive, which they are, but tolerating the words will communicate to certain employees, whom such terms label, they are not wanted in the company. Are you sure you want to promulgate that message? If you do then maybe what is really not wanted is employers who tolerate this.
If your best employee is Black or Hispanic, Asian, etc. and you tolerate language against them, don’t be surprised if your best employee becomes your competitor’s best employee. Do not let yourself stand there and say: “I did not see that coming.” You should have.
There are one-time things that cannot be tolerated. I had a per diem employee who once described Latinos and their language in a vile racial slur. My immediate response? “You’re done.”
Yes, there may be cancel culture and some say it has gone too far. However, the best response is to make sure those words are not in your lexicon. If they are, at least teach your children not to allow them in their lives. They have no place in any vocabulary.
By the way, special note to journalists: writing as an Irish American, may I encourage you to look up the term “paddy wagon” to describe that vehicle the police use to arrest groups. It is an ethnic slur. It sounds ridiculous when I hear a TV reporter say it while describing intolerance for racism.