DURING WEEKS like these -- when congested sinuses softly wheeze the sweet song of spring -- some neglected topics might merit our attention. So rather than decrying injustice or bolstering a campaign with fiery rhetoric, it's worth exploring the vocabulary we use to do both. The language employed to articulate arguments about diversity, racism, etc. carries cultural meaning, the nature of which we often overlook or ignore. The world won't stop rotating if we pause, think for a moment, and ask why racial language doesn't only describe skin color.
To better contextualize this claim, one ought to use an innocuous example -- without burdensome cultural stigma -- to show how pregnant words can change the way we think.
Take, for example, squirrels. When I think of squirrels, as I often do, I use words like "rodents" or "vermin" or "rats." Such labels come intuitively; my insubstantial lexicon can't offer much else. It seems, then, that by describing certain animals, we label them using specific vocabularies, which carry meaning beyond the definition of each word. We categorize unthinkingly, the meanings of which often attend to biological lies. Blacks have superior athletic prowess. Asians naturally gravitate to the sciences. Latinos steal cars between siestas. Again, the stereotypes come intuitively because implicitly racialized terms activate racist predispositions. Think about squirrels a bit, if you doubt me.
Much to the chagrin of squirrel haters, these vocabularies are as harmful as they are untrue.
According to John Porter, a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences, "Squirrels contribute to biodiversity in the sense that they help trees to disperse. There are a whole lot of nuts that are squirrel-dispersed. The other thing about squirrels," he added morbidly, "is that they serve as food."
Literature and popular culture, however, are replete with sinister portrayals of rodents and vermin. E.B. White's beloved tale, Charlotte's Web, depicts Templeton the rat as the gluttonous, loathsome anti-hero to the decidedly cute pig, Wilbur. Orwell's 1984 describes torture using methods most foul. The more horrific of which include, of course, lots and lots of rats.
In other words, rodents, and by proxy, squirrels, are culturally marked as filthy, inconvenient and immoral. But, really, one cannot seriously assign a moral standard to an animal with a brain rivaled in size only by their turds.
Historians portray rodents as pests. They never miss the chance to indict rodents as the cause of the Black Death, which decimated 14th century Europe. The subconscious connection solidifies -- Templeton and his brethren kill millions of white people. Thus, rodents are bad, even evil.
The association extends naturally to squirrels, which tend to be regarded as ethnically related to rats. Case in point: My father describes squirrels ("tree rats") as grotesque derivations of pigeons ("flying rats"), catfish ("swimming rats") and Republicans ("lying rats").
The historical, cultural and day-to-day rhetoric surrounding squirrels taints words like "vermin" and "rodent" as unquestionably negative. Even the word "squirrelly" describes someone who can't be trusted. See, you can't even read the words without conjuring images of sewers and crafty beasts yearning to defoliate the nearest oak tree.
Language evokes meaning. As simplistic as that sounds, one needn't use derogatory racial terms to convey the same stereotype. Outright bigotry and subtle discussions on self-segregation often convey the same cultural "meaning," even if one uses less blatantly offensive language.
This etymological exercise hopefully shows the profound power of language. More importantly, it shows the way in which meaning and description are never mutually exclusive. Even if squirrels are diabolical creatures conspiring against us, one cannot describe them without imparting meaning. The structures that assign words with meaning dwell deep within our vocabularies and our culture.
One hopes, at this point, to draw some metanarrative -- a conclusion that binds squirrel relations to broader, human ideology. Here it is: Descriptive words don't merely label objects. The words are, themselves, meaningful. "Rodent" and "vermin" don't only describe squirrels, just as "black" doesn't only describe skin color.
Is it so challenging to imagine a new vocabulary in which words like "rodent," "black" or "Arab" didn't carry the same cultural conclusion? Only a fool would say it isn't. But if awareness is the first agonizing step toward a new, de-racialized vocabulary, we might be on our way.
Dan Keyserling is a Cavalier Dailyassociate editor. He can be reached as dkeyserling@cavalierdaily.com.
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