If you go to Tufts, then you probably have a mental list of words that you sometimes hear in your hometown or even, on occasion, at a family gathering, but would never, ever dream of uttering within 10 miles of campus. You wouldn't go near the K-word or the D-word, let alone the C-word or the N-word. In fact, there are so many __-words to remember that you probably shudder with fear after articulating completely innocuous ones like "black" or "homosexual" or "Canada," waiting for someone to jump down your throat. (If you don't go to Tufts, then you're most likely confused. This is the Daily. Sudoku is on page 11.) For the most part, I get it. I was never a believer in the elementary school rhyme about sticks and stones and cried when people so much as mentioned my frizzy hair. Words aren't just words. Well, they are just words. But they pick up all kinds of meanings and connotations over the course of their various histories and often rehash bad memories that are more pleasant to just stow away. Hence, political correctness. But I don't want to talk about those words. I want to talk about why — for the very reasons that certain words are deemed un-PC in the first place — political correctness is basically futile. Un-PC terms make it onto the blacklist because we know them to be painfully racist, sexist or discriminatory in some way. But what about the rest of the words that we use on a daily basis? Can we ensure that we're not being accidentally offensive or constantly using racial slurs? Absolutely not. Commonplace words have histories of their own, most of them so forgotten that we overlook the prejudices they unsuspectingly harbor. Let me explain what I mean. There was a girl in my high school history class who refused to refer to the study as "history" and instead chose "herstory." My teacher, infuriated, assured the girl that "history" is not sexist and does not relate to the gender-specific pronoun "his" but rather to the Greek word "historia," meaning narrative. She wouldn't let up, so he scornfully told her to shut up. He probably shouldn't have done so, foremost because it was mean, but also because, in a way, she was right. No, the "his" in "history" does not imply that the narrative of history is the narrative of men. But the word "history" in "historia" does mean "wise man," implying that the writers of history's narrative are in fact men. Not sold? Here's another one: Killers, murderers, assassins — they're all words used to judge criminals solely on the basis of their actions, right? Colloquially, yes. But the word "assassin," according to a popular etymological theory, actually comes from the Arabic "hashishiyyin," meaning hashish-user and referring to a sect of Muslims during the Crusades rumored to have gotten high off of hashish and then gone on murderous raids of their opponents under the influence. So when you accuse someone of being an assassin, you can't do it without bringing up Muslims and drugs. Similarly, the phrase "running amok" (which is kind of like going berserk) comes from the Malay word "amuk" and was used by Westerners in reference to native South Asians, who, allegedly, were inclined to work up a frenzy, run into the streets and kill everyone in sight. No one calls that phrase the RA-word. But perhaps the greatest irony lies in the term "political correctness" itself, which is said to have been coined by Mao's "Little Red Book" to indicate that only opinions aligning with Maoism and Marxism were "politically correct." That sucks, I know, but PC is a delicate game to play. And oftentimes, without even realizing it, you get gypped.
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Romy Oltuski is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Romy.Oltuski@tufts.edu.
