The Ability To Even (Collegiate Chronicles)

Buzzwords

According to the Google: word or phrase, often an item of jargon, that is fashionable at a particular time or in a particular context. (emphasis mine)

Brief context-based primer: Buzzwords I speak of here refer to those repeated in the realm of social justice activism

eg: speaking truth to power

privilege (white, class,etc.)

cultural appropriation

mansplaining

problematic

oppression

sexist

The problem with these words is not their existence per se (at least to me). Words exist to give names to phenomena, feelings, observations so we can talk about them, giving us a common lingua-franca to express ourselves. Therein the problem lies. These words may mean different things to different people. And the miscommunication abounds.

"[The English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts... if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."

― George Orwell

George Orwell talked about the slovenliness of language. The untidy, unclear, unsound nature of the words we create allows us to sidestep the first step in properly listening o one another: understanding.

 Which I why when ever I may have to speak of any of these things, I describe. Instead of talking to a friend and saying 'white privilege', I'd ask him if he'd like to be treated like a black person. After all, he had said there was black privilege. Why doesn't he want to be black. Observe why you would not want to be black.

It communicates what I want to say without bringing up a word that would raise hackles, that means a different thing to him. After all, words are to facilitate conversation, communication. How can we communicate with the chasm of definition between us?

This doesn't mean that these words should never be used. They give names to things.

For instance, I have this thick 'distinct and beautiful' Nigerian accent. Literally, all I need to do is say a maximum of two words and anyone familiar with a Nigerian accent knows where I'm from. Or at least, knows that I am not from around here. Hence, I get questions about where I am from, how or why I learnt English or 'compliments' on how well I speak English.

There was a day, early in my first semester, where a group of girls took it upon themselves to question me,my accent, my English and then reassure me that their relatives had done charity work in Kenya. There was this... feeling I got from them. Like, I was this new thing in their surrounding to observe. It was not their questions. I had gotten similar questions about my English once before then and even after. I could feel the actual curiosity from the people asking me.

But not from these girls. It was when I came across the word : Othering'  it made sense. 

view or treat (a person or group of people) as intrinsically different from and alien to oneself.

It gave me a word to the feeling I got from those girls and let me know that I was not paranoid or overreacting in some way. It's not like I could exactly put words to that feeling to anyone else. But the existence of this word and concept: othering just ... made sense. And therein was is the use of buzzwords.

What makes them so buzzy really, is overuse and lack of clarity

- KC