Elite Boys Club Syntax

I sometimes feel like the English language is some exclusive boys club, with the sig posted, "No Girlz Allowed!!!"

And the design specs of the English language seem to be drafted to favor a portion of our population who are white-skinned, prefer to mate with the opposite gender, and for that purpose have a dangling proboscis that seems to serve as the nexus of this language's design.

Imagine language as an automobile, and I'm lifting up the hood to find it's not an engine of syntax and tenses, but instead a 12-year old boy is glaring up at me, and he's angry that I'm interrupting his enjoyment of a porn magazine.

 

One thing I learned in college is language can be so much more than a male fraternity pledge hazing: with language we can both explore our world, and also create one at the same time.

Jane Hirshfield: Spell to be Said Against Hatred

SPELL TO BE SAID AGAINST HATRED

by Jane Hirshfield

via brainpickings

Until each breath refuses they, those, them.
Until the Dramatis Personae of the book’s first page says, “Each one is you.”
Until hope bows to its hopelessness only as one self bows to another. Until cruelty bends to its work and sees suddenly: I.
Until anger and insult know themselves burnable legs of a useless table.
Until the unsurprised unbidden knees find themselves bending. Until fear bows to its object as a bird’s shadow bows to its bird. Until the ache of the solitude inside the hands, the ribs, the ankles. Until the sound the mouse makes inside the mouth of the cat. Until the inaudible acids bathing the coral.
Until what feels no one’s weighing is no longer weightless.
Until what feels no one’s earning is no longer taken.
Until grief, pity, confusion, laughter, longing know themselves mirrors.
Until by we we mean I, them, you, the muskrat, the tiger, the hunger.
Until by I we mean as a dog barks, sounding and vanishing and
sounding and vanishing completely.
Until by until we mean I, we, you, them, the muskrat, the tiger, the
hunger, the lonely barking of the dog before it is answered.

Final Proof

Racism is baked in

We've had the ways and means to effectively address racism and its causes for (at least) the past 60 years. The fact we haven't been able to do so means racism is deeply interwoven into the very fabric of our society and culture, and if it is addressed, the very people who consider themselves the gatekeepers of fashion, society and culture feel threatened.

Any efforts to actively confront racism and its root causes triggers legal and political violence, to shock and overawe those activists who seek to bring meaningful progressive change. If we try to make the USA a better place, we will be beaten, teargassed, and arrested—or even killed, slaughtered in the streets by agents of the state, without mercy. The ruling elite desperately—savagely—defends and embraces racism as if those in power cannot survive without it. We see now racism is not just endemic, but a necessary tool of oppression.

The ultimate irony—enough to make angels weep—is racism solves nothing. Not a damn thing. This is the true malefic such noble souls as Martin Luther King tried to dispel, that racism itself is but a symptom of a greater evil, not a cause in itself. I do not have a label for this deeper corruption of our souls, that fuels the engines of war and hatred and contempt, and such labels readily available only serve to misidentify and distract.

The best way to address these cruelties, these institutional barbarisms, is to cast out fear. And the greatest fear among the oppressors is the loss of identity as a master race, as the work to eliminate racism is to also eradicate the concept of race itself—and those who rely on racial superiority to define themselves stand to lose the most in such a time of liberation and equality. Cast adrift, these racist bigots will resort to violence unimaginable. Compromise in any form will be viewed as treason to racial purity and superiority.

Although racism itself—and the regressive policies supporting racism—solves nothing, the solution for racism is found in addressing its underlying causes. My hope is we can make racism unnecessary, to make the myths of racial superiority collapse like the over-inflated balloon it is.

And the reality is...

And the Devil smiles...