WORDS
We live in a complicated world that can’t be addressed by
simple beliefs, no matter how hard we try. Take words, for example. We read now
how certain words face prohibition because they make some young people feel unsafe.
I don't imagine they have ever heard the sound of a walking mortar barrage coming toward them.
As a person in the generation before me said of life in an
infantry battalion, “You just pray to live one more second,
just one more second.” I never reached that point, but I lived through situations that taught me what true terror is, and it wasn’t caused by words.
But then, I’m not a ten-year-old African American child hearing
a word hurled at me by a Southern bully, a word that deserves banning if a word
ever achieved that status.
Part of me worries though. It would be impossible to write
an honest novel based in my home state of Arkansas, or any other southern state,
or perhaps even in America, and set in the 1950s with no possibility of using
that word, even in an absolute condition of context.
The answer? I don’t know. Perhaps we might start by accepting the truth that they are only words. As simply words, they might be used to teach and elucidate, or even add the appropriate textures to historical reporting, The control that we might exert over their use would be a sign of discipline, not destruction. Words teach us. They don't tear us apart. They deserve enlightened use, not eradication.
Which might be more useful for the young, teaching them ways to maintain their personal safety, or banning the use of the word "rape" in news reports?
If we allow words to establish
our condition of safety, what will happen when the mortar barrages begins?
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