The most ridiuclous piece ever published by Canada's public broadcaster

Earlier this week, CBC News published an article titled "Words and phrases you may want to think twice about using". At first glance, it seemed like a learning opportunity for this novice writer and as someone who is always working on how to communicate with others more effectively. But then I started reading some of the words and phrases that are supposedly bad and soon the contents of my stomach started to creep its way up my throat.

Let's start with words and phrases the article highlighted such as 'blacklist', 'whitelist', 'blackmail', and 'black sheep'. It is suggested that any use of the words 'black' and 'white' is now associated with the Black community and with people of European dissent, respectively. I don't know about you, but when I think of the word 'black', I think of the darkest colour, and the complete absence of light, implying a negative connotation. And when I think of the word 'white', I think of brightness and the combination of all visible colours that are on light spectrum, implying a positive connotation. That is it. Suggesting that these words have inherent racial connotations seems like a contrived way of forcing something innocuous into a discussion on racial identity. Yes, racialized communities have to live in a society that has traditionally benefited men of European dissent, but I am not sure how considering the basic uses of the words 'white' and 'black' as racial terms is going to make our society more inclusive and egalitarian, and less focused on race.

It is also insane to automatically associate the word 'spooky' when used to refer to something as scary as a racial term, as the article suggests. Referring to Black people as spooks is absolutely a terrible thing to do but so is negatively stereotyping any group by any word. Are we going to ban every adjective that could be used to denigrate a diverse group of people? Would it not make more sense to just avoid stereotyping people in any negative and regressive manner? Could you image what an immigrant new to English has to go through to learn and understand our already-convoluted language before they even begin to learn the list of all the words and phrases that were once used or could be used in a negative way towards a group of people?

Now how about 'tone deaf', 'dumb', 'lame', 'brainstorm', 'blindsided', and 'blind-spot'? It is suggested that these words and phrases must now be used carefully or not at all, lest we offend someone with a disability. If you are offended by any of these words and phrases being used in their typical fashion, it says more about you than the person saying it. Same goes if you are offended by the word 'grandfathered'. If you cannot handle such benign words and phrases, then I'm not sure you are ready to participate in society.

I get it. Participating in society is hard, even as a white man myself. I have experienced anxiety most of my life, and at times it was crippling (oops, also a bad word). You know what I am doing about it? I changed my own habits and face my fears head on (this is also the clinical way of addressing many forms of anxiety). I am also learning to assume positive intent in people instead of egotistically thinking I am being attacked whenever I feel anxious. It is a lot more effective to do these things than expecting everywhere I go to be a safe space for me. It also doesn't help with anxiety when we feel like we must be walking on eggshells lest we say the wrong word. Nor does it help the anxiety of the continually-offended to be policing the words coming out of people's mouths.

That is not to say that when we are communicating, we should not consider who our audience is and not avoid being an asshole. But censorship and shaming each other over words is not going to suddenly make the assholes disappear. I used to think that "killing people with kindness" was as lefty as it can get for advice but how does making people feel even worse about themselves for the mistake of using the wrong words going to make us a more kind society? Doing these things is only going to push people to platforms that allow real hate to perpetuate in even tighter echo chambers. Censorship and political correctness are the cause of despots like Donald Trump, not the remedy.

After all, combating reactionaries with reactionaryism sounds awfully like trying to make right from two wrongs. The impact of our words matter but so does intent. Blanket banning of words and phrases that sound bad is moving us backwards as a society and not forward and does not bring us closer to understanding and accepting each other as humans sharing the same planet. Continually questioning each other over our words while ignoring intentions is why we aren't effectively progressing as a society.

This all is exactly what I mean about how political correctness and token gestures are covering for the economic root causes of the conflicts we are facing in our elite-controlled, profit-based society. Nothing in the CBC News article will do anything of significance to solve these problems and will in fact widen the divisions in our already overly-tribal (dammit, another bad word) society. Instead of pushing for real climate change action and economic justice and egalitarianism, this is what it seems like the left, to which I belong, is focused on instead. And we are getting laughed and ridiculed by the same people who we need to be on our side to make any significant progress.

Whoever approved this article and catapulted it to being the top story on CBC News should be embarrassed and ashamed of themselves. Such nonsense should be reserved as satire on the Onion or the Beaverton and nowhere else.