A WEEKLY DOSE OF FAITH
Faith Grey is the pseudonym of an incorrigible flaneuse, freelance researcher, writer, and editor.
[Tags: decolonisation, ethnic, examples of racist language, fauna and flora, geographic names, hate speech, interracial, multicultural and polyethnic societies, pragmatic perspective, pressure groups, race, racist, racist expressions, racist language, racism]
I fled to the internet earlier this week in search of a comprehensive publishing House Style Manual I could look at for South African academic and fiction editors, which includes a lexicon of alternatives to archaic derogatory/offensive words/ter ms with racial, and/or cultural/gender/neurodiverse etc., connotations. I was sure such a list exists: more extensive than, but including, the obvious, brutal terms (native, maid, gardener, imbecile, savage, etc.) which editors have grown accustomed to finding all over manuscripts.
I had been confronted with a feisty commissioning editor who threw a job back at me with the instruction to replace offensive words I had used in my preliminary edit of a manuscript. The words were ‘native’ and ‘indigenous’. I had used both in their correct meaning, but I immediately understood that these words have negative connotations for South Africans. To simply trot out ‘the local people’ would be inaccurate, because in the case at hand the community was populated by more than one race group, included in which were European immigrants and several groups of migrant workers from other countries who had settled there.
It becomes difficult to not override the author’s voice as an editor, and I was determined to find a solution. It seems there is no fit-all editorial style sheet for this, no manual for how to decolonise our literature in scientific and creative writing. Decolonization is the process of undoing colonizing practices. Within the educational context, this means confronting and challenging the colonizing practices that have influenced education in the past, and which are still present today.[1]
Indigenous This term is usually used to mean a person who belongs naturally to a place in the sense of long term family origins (see Native). This term is sometimes used to identify the majority population, for example, in the United Kingdom as an alternative to the word White. In some parts of the world, for example, Australia, the word indigenous is used specifically to refer to aboriginal populations (for example, Aborigine).
Native Sometimes this word is used to refer to populations born, or with family origins, in a place (see indigenous). This was also a pejorative term meaning populations belonging to a non-European and imperfectly civilised or savage race, so writers need to take care.
As I commenced my search for a thesaurus of South African derogatory terms, I found numerous theses explaining the offensiveness of words/terms, but no list of acceptable alternatives. Secondly, I began to wonder if there could there be a generic disclaimer in existence, a perfectly tailored escape-hatch for the lazier writer. Thirdly, I sought clarity on whether clinical, scientific words and phrases, devoid of the emotive or sensationalist language that prevails in our literature and discourse, would serve us in any way to educate and inform the reader.
Address the persistence of discrimination
D.C. Hauptfleisch, who died in 2008, was the fourth editor in chief of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (WAT). His article in Lexicos, (a journal devoted entirely to lexicographical specialists, imagine!) way back in 1993, Racist Language in Society and in Dictionaries: A Pragmatic Perspective, makes for a good starting point on how to understand the scale of the problem. He reflects that, like all countries, language in South Africa displays its particular national heritage and history. “In South Africa’s case, this history involves colonial expropriation and subjugation of native Africans; national conflict between and among European and African nationalities; the separation of the races by law and force known as apartheid; a revolutionary effort to bring about multi-racial democracy; and post-apartheid challenges to enable social, economic, and political rights for all South Africans to address this legacy.[2] The country’s languages and discourses thus exhibit all of the rough features of the society, and offensive and inflammatory speech has been a feature particularly given these historical factors.” Through its post-apartheid Constitution, legislation such as the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, and new institutions like the South African Human Rights Commission, South Africa has aimed to address the persistence of discrimination, intolerance, and hateful speech.[3]
I can’t imagine how historians will deal with Donald Trump’s vile parody of a disabled person in the retelling of the moment the world should have rolled up its collective sleeves and put the man away where he could not influence history. Former President Thabo Mbeki was a vociferous advocate of removing discriminatory terminology for disabled people. Our own Amakrok okroko/amakroko kroko/retard/spaz are derogatory phrases used by South Africans to refer to people living withdisabilities. This kind of blatant abuse through words is prevalent on social media in commentary around events like the Special Olympics and its athletes, as well as by sports organizations and broadcasters. Use of these terms has been widespread to refer to all people with disabilities.Athletes or Paralympians should, of course, be used asalternative terms.
My search through the meandering midnight corridors of Google landed me-unexpectedly-in Scotland next, as I tried to find comparison with India, which has faced a similar colonial history.
LABELS EMBEDDED IN LITERATURE
Raj S Bhopal
The University of Edinburgh | UoE · Usher Institute
CBE DSc, BSc MD, MPH, MBChB, FRCP, FFPHM[4]
Research Explorer (yes, that is a real title), Raj Bhopal, Professor Emeritus of Public Health at The University of Edinburgh, writes:[5]
“As a Punjabi born Indian raised in Scotland I found the popular UK label ‘‘Asian’’ to describe people like me as simplistic. In 1984 I learned that this label was embedded in the scientific literature. In publications in the 1980s I took the unusual step of defining Asian, for example, ‘‘For the purposes of this study, Asian refers to persons whose ancestry is from the Indian subcontinent’’. I also tried italicising the word Asian and putting it in quotations to alert the reader to the limited use of the word. In retrospect these steps were insufficient. I realised that in the United States Asian was interpreted as far Eastern Asian populations In my writing I started to provide a statement on my use of terms, sometimes as an introductory paragraph as indicated in the appendix.”
An upfront disclaimer! My hero! Explain it to the reader, simple as that! The measurement, or assignment, of ethnicity is problematic, Bhopal says, despite much research and debate. Presently, self-definition of ethnicity is gaining favour. The problem is, he explains, that the self-assessment changes over time and with context. Although this fluidity has strengths. understanding of the concepts of race or ethnicity and the classification they use (for example, one or a mix of ancestry, geographical origin, birthplace, language, religion, migration history, name, self-identity, observation, etc.) is vital.
It is risky to ignore that categories are merely labels, and only the first step to understanding and defining a person’s ethnicity or race. Such labels need to be flagged as shorthand for potentially important information. Bhopal cautions that authors should be describing the characteristics of the populations they are referring to. A perfect example of what he means appears frequently for eagle-eyed local editors, where the label ‘‘local Xhosa tribesmen” should not be used if the population of a community at a particular time was made up equally of indigenous people who self-identify as having a unique identity. The Xhosa people are divided into several tribes with related yet distinct heritages. The main tribes are the amaGcaleka, amaRharhabe, imiDange, imiDushane, and amaNdlambe. In addition, there are other tribes found near or among the Xhosa people such as abaThembu, amaBhaca, abakoBhosha and amaQwathi that are distinct and separate tribes which have adopted the isiXhosa language and the Xhosa way of life.[6]
Due respect should be exercised
Popular terminology for ethnic minority populations has sufficed for everyday conversation or political exchange. It’s crude and hurtful, and – when unavoidably used needs a respectful tool with which to acknowledge the pain it may cause the reader. I’m a big fan of the Generic Foreword suggested by Professor Bhopal, to the horror of my extent-stingy publishers. I think it is the book version of the social media ’Trigger Warning’ that precedes posts pertaining to traumatic material.
I love footnotes most, even in fiction, because they don’t take the reader away from the page to a dictionary or a glossary at the end of the book. In this perfect example, if, say, the character is an early 20th century botanist, the dialogue would lose a crucial sense of place, should the stiffness of the Latin replace the colloquial names and here a footnote would be a respectful solution:
Kaffir beer> sorghum beer; kafferleIie > clivia (d. Erica> erica and Protea > pro tea);
Kaffir tree> coral tree; nigger daisy> black-eyed Susan.
Likewise, in dialogue or in a letter, a white teenager in 1950s South Africa is unlikely to flee with her broken heart to the embrace of the ‘domestic cleaner, char, or housekeeper’, and we must treat her crying on her ‘aya’s’ breast with a sympathetic hand, while clearly not condoning the offensiveness.
I’m also quite taken with the idea of the lexographer’s marks as an option that supports the clear understanding of the offensive nature of the word. A short standard format foreword detailing the mechanics, and from then on the firm, wagging finger of a simple (d) to make it clear that the term is derogatory and discouraged except in the specific context. The purist publishers will baulk at this sort of scaffolding being introduced into their pristine house styles, but I foresee a subtle change to the structure of all publications as we move towards a new and universally accepted way of telling the truth as it hasn’t been done before.
Racist language has occurred and still occurs in probably every society. Usually it originates from antagonistic interracial contact situations. As a result of disagreeable personal experiences in such situations, judgements and prejudices are formed and given expression through disparaging utterances which readily become stereotypes. Repeated use of such stereotypes fosters the perception that they are to be accepted as forming part of the lexicon of the language in question.[7]
The 145 terms in a study of 10 British and American dictionaries include terms for nationality, racial or cultural group, lack of intelligence, deceitfulness, sexual orientation, followed by some terms for women and men. The study concludes that the likelihood of a ‘negative’ labelling being supplied varies clearly from one semantic group to another. As for the actual frequency of labelling in particular dictionaries, it appears that some compilers more than others assume that the definition of the word conveys its ‘negativeness’, without the need for a label. Modifiers like ‘often’ or ‘usually’ are fairly common and uses other than the pejorative are sometimes mentioned, but the simple type of label is preferred in most volumes. Overall, the terminology descriptive of derision is very varied. The distinction made in some of the prefaces between derogatory/disparaging and offensive words proves hard to maintain in practice.[8]
Will Ferroggiaro is a Director at Strategy for Humanity LLC, where he focuses on issues of conflict, governance, and media. He has served as PeaceTech Lab’s primary consultant on hate speech since 2015, including as lead author of lexicons on South Sudan and Nigeria. Previously, he established the Media and Conflict program at Internews. Among other roles, he led a Fund for Peace team producing analysis for the UN Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention and conducted a lessons-learned study on the 1994 Rwanda genocide for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In a report, SOCIAL MEDIA, RACISM, XENOPHOBIA AND INTOLERANCE IN SOUTH AFRICA: A LEXICON OF HATE SPEECH TERMS[9], he says:
Methodologies for identifying and analyzing hate speech in any country context are relatively new and in need of not only testing and refining but also of elucidating and explaining. Postapartheid South Africa is a revolutionary and transformational society, and is often at the forefront of incorporating a human rights or justice perspective into its institutions, legal frameworks, and broader culture – an effort which continues. While South Africa defines prohibited speech in legislation, there isn’t a universally accepted or understood definition of hate speech amongst society. Thus, the team uses the phrases ‘offensive and inflammatory’ as a threshold to guide respondents/participants, monitors, peer reviewers, and expert advisors in assessing such speech. The terms are then considered on the basis of how offensive and inflammatory they are on a continuum of derogatory, offensive, and action. In this way, the team aims to avoid the tendency among respondents to want to offer legalistic definitions but instead allow for the complexity of origins and meaning and the fluid nature of language.[10]
Before we even attempt to break the Umlungu into his tribes, clans and rugby teams, then, we must decide what we are going to call him, so as to sidestep all avenues of possible offence and attempt truly egalitarian literature.
Kill all mulungu!; Ngamla! Shout the soldiers as they rush into a laager, goes the account. How on earth do we tell young readers what could possibly have made men utter such ghastly things; let us explain it, not whitewash it, surely? We must tell the reader, as the WAT does, that mlungu, malungu, mulungu, mhlungu, umhlungu; is a Xhosa and Zulu word which some South Africans believe refers to the white foam — white scum — from the ocean; thus, some whites view it as pejorative. However, its Xhosa origins indicate a more neutral meaning of ‘white person.’ In practical usage, the word has various meanings/connotations. Umlungu is also a word used to describe owners of capital, managers, or a boss; it is usually used colloquially by labourers to refer to their immediate head (black or white). However, the term may be offensive only in certain contexts as it is sometimes used by blacks to refer to other blacks or to whites in terms of class or caste. Alternative words that could be used: white person.
Too much for a footnote? Do you see how far we have to go?
Feel the words
Hauptfleisch says it is generally accepted that dictionaries, especially the larger, comprehensive dictionaries, should mirror all the manifold facets of the linguistic society and times in which they are compiled. The task of the lexicographer therefore involves the inclusion also of lexical items which can generally be classed as taboo, such as obscene, sexist, sacrilegious and racist terms, provided such inclusions are well attested” by adequate recordings of use. Amakhula/khuli/Coolie, for instance, is explained as ‘A term originating in the apartheid era to refer in a derogatory way to South Africans who were or appeared to be of Indian heritage. It was also prominent in the 2008 and 2015 xenophobic attacks targeting people of both Indian and Pakistani heritage. Since it’s based on appearance, it is highly inflammatory and similar to ‘kaffir’ in impact. ‘Indian’ and ‘ama ndiya’ are two alternative terms that could be used.’ The perfect footnote text, without anaesthetising the authenticity.
One of the methodologies used by Ferroggiaro in his research of hate speech was the Cloudle app. I have long used a similar tool, Word Cloud, which creates a ‘mood image’ from text I input to nudge my poetry along. Users can paste text from a document or type it directly into Word Cloud, and choose a colour scheme and fonts. The tool automatically generates a word cloud that visually represents how often various words appear. Frequently used words are larger than others, and so-theoretically-the overriding emotion in the piece of text is revealed to the user.
For now I think I will go with a Word Cloud when I work, whether editing an academic paper or in my own creative writing. I will follow the wisest of ancient advice, and put myself in the shoes of my subject matter and its characters, as well as my reader, and try to be mindful of what sort of feelings are evoked by the power of words under my fingers.
[1] https://literariness.org/2017/10/04/decolonization/
[2] Word Cloud image by author
[3] South Africa’s efforts on hate speech and freedom of expression — domestically and internationally — reflect its complexity and are not without their critics. See Wendy Isaack, “South African Move on Hate Speech a Step Too Far,” Human Rights Watch, February 21, 2017, accessed April 11, 2019, https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/02/21/south-african-move-hate-speech-step-toofar, and Penelope Andrews, “South Africa’s Vote against Internet Freedom Tarnishes Its Global Image,” The Conversation, July 14, 2016, accessed April 11, 2019, https://theconversation.com/south-africas-vote-against-internet-freedom-tarnishes-its-globalimage-62112.
[4] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Raj_Bhopal/5
[5] J Epidemiol Community Health 2004;58:441–445. doi: 10.1136/jech.2003.013466
Or
J Epidemiol Community Health: first published as 10.1136/jech.2003.013466 on 13 May 2004. Downloaded from http://jech.bmj.com/ on February 10, 2021 by guest. Protected by copyright.
[6] https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/the-culture-and-heritage-of-the-amampondo-tribe/
[7] Hauptfleisch, D. (2013). Racist Language in Society and in Dictionaries: A Pragmatic Perspective. Lexikos, 3(1). doi:https://doi.org/10
[8] https://academic.oup.com/ijl/article-abstract/13/2/71/960348
[9] static1.squarespace.com/static/54257189e4b0ac0d5fca1566/t/5cb7554ce5e5f0813816bf5a/1555519276323/PeaceTech+Lab+-+South+Africa+Lexicon
[10] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54257189e4b0ac0d5fca1566/t/5cb7554ce5e5f0813816bf5a/1555519276323/PeaceTech+Lab+-+South+Africa+Lexicon
[11] Word Cloud image by author
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