By Joan Baum
Remember the old nursery rhyme: “sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me”?
How ironic that the origin of the expression is attributed to an “adage” said to have appeared in The Christian Recorder in March 1862, the official organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The date is significant on the timeline of the uncivil War Between the States, even as the word “adage” suggests that the rhyme was around before that.
Of course, words not only can hurt, they can provoke, sometimes to deadly effect. But what’s also true is that retaliatory “-ism” words can obscure inquiry into the origin of hate-based acts and flatter users into thinking they have answers to complex problems, as if naming were the same as knowing, and knowing the same as exercising countervailing power.
How easy to fall back on catchphrases and clichés, especially when they contain “-ism” words. Voices in media and politics advocate “being part of the conversation,” but there can be little conversation when finger-pointing labels and “-ism” words short-circuit critical discussion by assuming we all know what the “-ism” words stand for.
Without relying on “-ism” words, people might have to define, describe or exemplify what lies behind umbrella words such as “racialism” or “racism,” often used interchangeably. Broadly, “racialism” refers to the belief that the human species is divided into distinct biological categories (races) as manifest by different cultural traits and genetic aspects, while “racism” refers to the belief that one race is superior to another, as determined by criteria advanced by those claiming the inherent superiority.
It’s all “scientific,” say those who have advocated theories of white supremacy. The “science,” however, is pseudoscience, based on determinants, physical and cognitive, designed by those who, in effect, subscribe to another “-ism”: Social Darwinism, a theory that loosely applies ideas about natural selection to ideas about the “survival of the fittest” (a phrase originated not by Charles Darwin but by British social philosopher Herbert Spencer). Not incidentally, Darwin, an abolitionist, would likely have been horrified to find his name attached to such a belief. (“On the Origin of Species” is about species, not race.)
Social Darwinism, which found a home in the imperial and colonial West, gained currency in America after Reconstruction, and was used to justify the subjugation of both slaves and free Black men. (Check out Tom Buchanan’s white supremacy remarks in “The Great Gatsby,” endorsed, of course, by Daisy.)
White supremacy lurks behind the dog-whistle expression “Make America Great Again,” as if borders and immigration policies could hold back what demographics show and predict. As for the “Great” past, which would seem to reference the victorious days following World War II, it should be remembered that America’s triumphs on the battlefield were accomplished by both black and white servicemen who were nonetheless a segregated force, and that such segregation was a fact of military life until Vietnam — contrary to the integrationist policy insisted upon at Valley Forge by General George Washington.
Words matter. How unfortunate that “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” has been withdrawn from many school curricula largely because of unease over the n-word. Mark Twain, arguably 19th century America’s most culturally astute and morally sensitive writer, knew what he was doing when he prefaced the book with a mock “notice” for readers to be wary of any motive, moral or plot in it, ascribing the notice to one “G.G., Chief of Ordinance.” G.G. was ex-slave George Griffin, Twain’s servant and friend, who lived in his house in Hartford, Connecticut, for 17 years, and whom he frequently and fondly referred to.
Twain also knew what he was doing when he put an uneducated young boy’s instinctive decision to save a runaway slave at the center of his cynical but instructive tale of adventure in antebellum America. And he knew what he was risking when he penned the satiric monologue “King Leopold’s Soliloquy,” accompanied by atrocity photos of slaves in the (Belgian) Congo Free State.
Literature matters, including offensive works of fiction, such as Margaret (“Gone With the Wind”) Mitchell’s friend Thomas Dixon’s inflammatory historical romance, “The Clansman,” published in 1905, the same year as Twain’s “King Leopold’s Soliloquy,” and 10 years before the monumental movie it inspired: D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation,” admired by President Woodrow Wilson.
No “-isms” in Dixon or Griffith — no need. The movie was a silent epic, but viewers got what was intended. As Wilson is reported to have said when he showed the film at the White House, “So true.”
Education matters. It may be too late for our adult generation, many of whom cite rigorous primary school experiences reading American history. But the record of including inconvenient truths in many textbooks is spotty. A lot about the founding and evolution of our country was left out or minimalized.
Until education, a constitutional responsibility reserved to states, embraces a national norm for textbooks, and teachers not in thrall to partisan politics, fear, regional bias or economic huckstering, there is no chance to confront prejudice, especially when it’s defended by selective reference to the Bible, founding father documents, or criminal justice statistics.
But that’s what “education” is supposed to do, as distinct from “training.” The word “education” means drawing or leading out, which means acknowledging and evaluating people and events in wider and deeper perspectives than what data, facts and history-as-heritage can convey.
It’s time.
Writer and critic Joan Baum lives in Springs.
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