If you thought leftist wokery had reached apogee when crackpots decided to replace the singular pronouns “he” and “she” with “they” to avoid offending the “gender-fluid” or “non-binary,” think again.
The University of Southern California’s School of Social Work has a message: “Hold my beer.”
The latest from commie college is that “field” must be banned because it evokes images of slaves in the field picking cotton, or of immigrant laborers in the field picking cotton.
And so the social work school has, indeed, banned “field.”
This isn’t the first time an innocent word has been expunged, and it won’t be the last. But it does show that leftists have seized control of the language, as communist agitator Saul Alinsky advised them to do, and as English novelist and essayist George Orwell warned would happen.
“Field” Not “Inclusive”
“Today, @uscsocialwork sent out this letter announcing that they will no longer use the word ‘field’ (as in ‘conducting field work’) because it’s perceived as racist,” tweeted ophthalmologist Houman Hemmati over a copy of the unsigned directive. “Is this with merit or empty virtue signaling?”
To ask the question is to answer it, but anyway, the notice explained the decision to ban “field” in language even an illiterate field hand can understand.
Noting that the school wants to “to ensure our use of inclusive language and practice,” the notice says “we have decided to remove the term ‘field’ from our curriculum and practice and replace it with ‘practicum,’” which is derived from the Latin word practicus (practical), a masculine or neutral adjective.
“This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” the notice continues:
Language can be powerful, and phrases as such as “going into the field” or “field work” may have connotations for the descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.…
In solidarity with universities across the nation, our goal is not just to change language but to honor and acknowledge inclusion and reject white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies. Words are powerful, but even more so is action. We are committing to further align our actions, behaviors, and practices with anti-racism and anti-oppression, which requires taking a close and critical look at our profession — our history, our biases, and our complicity in past and current injustices. It also means continuing to work together to train social work students today who understand and embody social and racial justice. This is the bedrock of our values and principles and we all need to hold each other accountable to do better in this regard.
This isn’t a joke. Replaced by the nonsensical “practicum,” “field” is now verbum non grata.
The notice does not explain what the punishment will be for using “field,” but one might imagine that a whipping will not be one of them.
Indeed, one might conclude that a teacher who said he will “whip his students into shape” could find himself before a disciplinary committee. Or maybe we should say “they” and “theirself” to avoid offending the school’s “gender-fluid” censors.
War on Language
The policing, cleansing, and manipulation of the language didn’t, of course, being at USC. Modern leftists have been bowdlerizing for decades.
In 1993 during a Virginia gubernatorial debate with then-GOP candidate George Allen, who eventually won the election, Democrat Mary Sue Terry landed in hot water for saying that her education plan would ensure that the commonwealth’s kids “have a Chinaman’s chance at graduation.”
Allen called the remark offensive. Amusingly, during his run for reelection to the U.S. Senate against Democrat Jim Webb in 2006, karma struck. Allen called a Democratic operative who attended his speeches a “macaca,” the Portuguese word for monkey. Allen lost the election.
In 1999, an aide to Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams resigned after he used the word “niggardly,” which means “miserly” or “stingy,” in a meeting with black employees. Angry black residents besieged the employee with phone calls because they thought he uttered a “racist” remark, which these days is considered just about as bad as murder.
In 2013, California State University at Chico altered its sexual harassment and violence policy to include “continual use of generic masculine terms such as to refer to people of both sexes.”
In 2018, the National Council of Teachers of English decided that “they” is the only acceptable form of a universal pronoun, which means we must no longer use a locution such as “every student must turn in his textbooks to school by the last day of the semester.” “His” and “hers” are not “inclusive.”
As the New Oxford Review observed in citing those cases, “In his 1946 essay ‘Politics and the English Language,’ George Orwell poses a thoughtful question: Does language experience ‘natural growth’ or is it shaped ‘for our own purposes’?”
In other words, does the English language organically evolve over time or is it purposefully manipulated in order to affect the social order? Anyone familiar with Orwell’s body of work can probably guess at the trajectory of his response.
Here’s an answer:
Two years ago, a reporter for the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis asked on Twitter whether the phrase “spick and span,” meaning spotlessly clean, was “offensive.” She — or they — decided to paraphrase the person who used it.
