Desensitization of Language

"F**k (you/off/my life/that/this)!", is America's favorite curse. Nevertheless, the use of the words "perpetrator", "delinquent", and other titles given to the "client" and "victim" seemed even more disrespectful in the way they were used. While we were discussing the use of language in our agencies in class, I realized that there are so many phrases and titles that are probably more disrespectful than the F-word. Intensity and tones also play into how disrespectful a word can be, but generally we seem to take more offense to labels that others put on us than curse words. On the other hand, even some titles that we use can seem overused and in some cases turned into words that don't seem to hold any disrespect anymore when used by specific people (e.g., N-word, ho, queer). In class, the word c*nt came up as another bad word, but as Americans, we may be more desensitized to the word. If you ever hear a British person call somebody else a c*nt, they definitely mean to disrespect more than if an American were to say it. The modern parent shouldn't discipline their children about which curse words count as "no-no" words but also some bad labels that shouldn't be used.

On the subject of labels that our agency workers use to distinguish others behind their backs and in their faces, it seems like there is a conscious effort to get away from what we have been desensitized to. Instead of giving somebody the label of victim, we use survivor. Instead of perpetrator or delinquent, we use client. When we are in public, we make an effort to get away from what we have learned to call others our whole life, but it's so easy to fall back into the same mindset when we're not in proximity of those who might take offense. Does that mean we should always be thinking about how to change ourselves to only speak in a respectful tone? No, we should often try to speak in a respectful manner, but the slangs and slurs of everyday language is also useful to know. It's easier on the brain to release the constricting rules of respect and just let loose when you need to relieve stress. Maybe that's what the people in the group sessions were doing at Timothy's agency, so it's okay for them to use the N-word. However, once the other employees are in the office, it's time for them to go back to work, so they should be thinking about how to speak without offending anybody. Then again, this way of thinking is only my own opinion.

Aside from desensitizing ourselves to bad words and labels, it seems like people are becoming more accustomed to bad language in the manner that Mr. George Orwell does not want society to fall into. We keep using phrases and language that sound good, but the meaning itself doesn't matter as long as it sounds similar to what we want to express. I notice that the words we use in everyday language are fads. As new phrases and words become popular, they become overused until the meaning is lost and changed in some cases. I am sorry Mr. Orwell, but I will be ending this post with a word that I believe is an example of my last statement and also breaks your fifth rule (never use a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent), swag!

Got Charity?

Day 2 of Support Group Fridays (aka Trauma #2):

"Did you want a coke?" I ask the teenager who I assumed was waiting for his mother. He politely replied "No thanks." A Case Manager breezed by to greet him and took him to have a meeting with him in our office. It still took me a couple minutes before I realized he was a client! He was 18, HIV positive and formerly homeless. I was speechless the entire meeting and could not shake the shame I felt in myself. How the hell could society ignore him to the point of homelessness, he's just a kid. I found out later he has no family. 'Kyle' became a homosexual and had contacted AIDS from a sexual experience. Since he was 18, he was officially considered an 'adult' and not allowed back to his foster home....

Even after he left, I was so upset with the fact that this kid had to endure these hardships and he was barely out of high school. As Professor Stein said in class: We want all our victims to act a certain way and look like a certain type. For HSI, all the clients I had met and had read their case files on we're older with estranged children, of a minority group and had a bit of rougher personality. My brain almost refused to accept Kyle as a client, I was determined that no one would let a kid 'fall' like this. Where was the charity his entire life?

Who's really the person helping? The good looking social entrepreneur who has time in life or the ones that used to be this kid's neighbors when he did have a family? Who could of helped him before this... As Robert said in class, "It's about rights you have, not having to deserve them." Charity doesn't have to be a big time non-profit or have a celebrity reinforcing it. I think some people have forgotten that charity can just be an individual act. Just helping one's neighbor is a work of charity. I think if Kyle had someone who was nice to him once in his life or reached out a hand, he might have made some different decisions. Does the general public assume the only way to help is donate money, let the non-profit companies handle it and think they've got it taken care of? There is a disconnect with helping someone on a personal basis or just assuming "someone else will do it." Has society completely lost their hospitality complex?

What Am I Missing?

BY PROFESSOR STEIN

My free association around our class session leads me back to the many issues that appear, at first, as polarities: the aspirational self versus the self-in-progress, the pragmatic mission versus the ideological one, the “real self” (imagine those as exaggerated air quotes) versus the self we perform for others, the heroic rescuer versus the grassroots reformer. I prefer to think of them all as paradoxes rather than polarities, each side complementing the other. Complementarity refers to the fact that the world is realized in dual ways; everything has a visible and an invisible side. When we perceive red, we can’t perceive green. They are color complements. This doesn’t mean that one color stops existing when you see the other. The principle is most aptly illustrated in figure-ground illusions: here you see a vase, there two profiles meeting. It has been used to great effect in art, such as Dali’s famous painting of Abraham Lincoln. If you view the painting from afar, you see only the face of the former president. If observed up close, the painting details the death of Christ. You can never see both images at once, although they exist simultaneously and, in fact, are mutually constituted. Both skilled art and metaphor: without the lines and shapes and colors that make Christ, there is no Lincoln. In this course, we will keep prodding to ask what you are NOT seeing when you focus on something, what you are NOT thinking about or discussing when you choose a particular issue to highlight.

Our last session focused on the internship experience. I keep picturing all of you being dropped on your heads in the middle of these new cultures. For some, this is stranger in a strange land time. However-as Ruby and Roberto noted-for other Fellows, the faces of the clients or the problems the seminar is addressing are startlingly familiar. Your empathy gets drawn from the well of your own identification; you feel like you know what people are going through because you have been there, done that. When you do not have an immediate simpatico, it may be more difficult to find the right rhythm but easier to find a pinch of objectivity. You see something different than the first person, who is paying attention to how in sync they feel. But you also may miss subtle things that the more naturally attuned person picks up. Same thing with a disciplinary perspective. Professor Reitz is an English professor. Maybe she sees people as walking narratives. I favor psychology so everyone looks nuts to me.

Because we have asked you to reflect on the overlaps and divergences between your personal mission and those of your agency, please take this post to brainstorm how we might bring all of ourselves (and all of our selves) to bear on the internship and seminar experience. So far, in the short a time you have been at your agency and in the seminar, what are you seeing/hearing that you didn’t expect to see/hear? Are there any assumptions you didn’t know you were making (about yourself or others) that you are suddenly questioning? Through which particular lenses have you/we reflexively looked at social justice? What might we all be missing?