{"id":109901,"date":"2016-03-07T15:32:59","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T20:32:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=109901"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:07:35","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:07:35","slug":"words-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/03\/words-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Words Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders<\/a> (the Kerner Commission) issued its report on the causes of the 1967 race riots in the United States, its basic conclusion was jarring: \u201cOur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white \u2013 separate and unequal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the election of a two-term African-American president, nearly half a century later America continues to grapple with serious racial issues, including the formidable challenge of how to discuss systemic racism, a subject that is the focus of Noel A. Cazenave\u2019s new book, Conceptualizing Racism: Breaking the Chains of Racially Accommodative Language<\/em><\/a> (Rowman & Littlefield 2016).<\/p>\n

Cazenave, a professor of sociology who is also on the Urban and Community Studies faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, begins and ends his book with a simple declaration: \u201cWords matter!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause oppressive systems like racism are held together through language comprised of words \u2013 precise and carefully chosen words \u2013 it matters whether the words we choose are \u2018race\u2019 or \u2018racism,\u2019 \u2018black\u2019 or \u2018African American,\u2019 \u2018minority\u2019 or \u2018racially oppressed,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

As an example of a rare moment when a large and robust conceptualization of racism was forced into the national discourse, Cazenave points to the direct and explicit language, like \u201cwhite racism,\u201d that shocked the nation when it was used in the Kerner Commission<\/a> report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was extraordinary language to come from a presidential commission,\u201d he says, noting that what he describes as \u201clinguistic racial accommodation\u201d \u2013 the use of words that avoid racism-explicit language \u2013 has evolved over the years. \u201cSuch language expands and contracts with current race relations in the United States. The normal default option is, of course, racial accommodation; when most of us use the vague and undersized idiom of the racial status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the themes of Cazenave\u2019s book is that today straightforward conversation about systemic racism is often not possible because of the claim that the nation is now a \u201ccolorblind society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMuch of today\u2019s racism is done in very subtle ways that fit this colorblind ideology,\u201d he says. \u201cEven if no one is called the \u2018N\u2019 word, the racism is still very consequential. At the same time, we have a society that during racially normal times will not even allow an honest discussion about systemic racism. Such racism evasiveness serves to maintain the status quo. A recent example is the attempt to shout down the \u2018Black Lives Matter<\/a>\u2019 movement through strident, white-backlash-driven pronouncements that \u2018All Lives Matter<\/a>.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In his book, Cazenave also points to highly publicized examples of when President Barack Obama did not use \u201cdirect and explicit language\u201d on clear issues of systemic racism: in the 2008 presidential campaign, during the controversy over comments by his former minister, Pastor Jeremiah Wright, who suggested that racism is endemic to American society, and then a year later when Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested while trying to open a locked door at his home in Cambridge, Mass., which generated a national debate over racial profiling by police.<\/p>\n

Cazenave says the nation\u2019s growing racial tensions following the 2015 shooting of an African-American teenager by a European-American police officer in Ferguson, Mo., and Republican candidate Donald Trump\u2019s comments about Mexicans and Muslims moved race relations to the front of the 2016 presidential campaign. \u201cBoth [Democratic candidates] Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are now using explicit terminology like \u2018racial justice\u2019 and \u2018systemic racism,\u2019\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

In Conceptualizing Racism,\u00a0<\/em>Cazenave hopes to offer important insights into how direct discussion about issues of racism can help \u201cdismantle every linguistic plank, screw, and nail of systemic racism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new book by a UConn sociologist discusses the need for more direct language to address systemic racism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":110465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2225,2306],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1918],"class_list":["post-109901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-voices"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 11:09:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109901"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110110,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109901\/revisions\/110110"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/110465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109901"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=109901"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=109901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}