The Field of Racism
A recent edition of the Wall Street Journal reprinted a January 9th email sent to all students and faculty in the college of social work at the University of Southern California. Finally, it has been announced that the department will put an end to the insensitive racist language it has used for so long as a heartless, commonplace reference to its professional practice. It is official. The USC college of social work will, from this point forward, no longer use the word "field." Here's the excerpt from the email that explains why:
We would like to share a change we are making . . . to ensure our use of inclusive language and practice. Specifically, we have decided to remove the term “field” from our curriculum and practice and replace it with “practicum.” 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. Language can be powerful, and phrases such as “going into the field” or “field work” may have connotations for 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.
The only way I could find this more asinine, absurd, and insulting is if I were black or an immigrant. The clear implication is that people are so fragile, so completely maladjusted and insecure that they can be traumatized by the mere mention of a word that, along with its thousands of other uses, could be used in a sentence which describes an injustice suffered by their ancestors.
If the scholars at the USC college of social work are on the right track, we better also get serious about eliminating other words that may be equally offensive. Why not change the points on the compass to "North, West, East, and That Realm of Racial Oppression"? As for other verbal injustices, what about the word (trigger warning) "tree," since this was an object used to perpetrate some of the worst acts of racial oppression in the past. I wonder if any social work students at USC will be reprimanded for using the "c" word? Certainly no one in the department would be so morally blind as to wear cotton clothing.
Though wokeism is the enemy of free speech, nothing could do more to undermine wokeism than allowing the woke to speak freely. No conservative commentator could do a more effective job of lampooning this facile, mindlessly emotional movement than the proponents of the movement itself.
On the positive side, if those who are so committed to the notion of an inherently racist America have to resort to this kind of laughable straw-grasping to prove their case, this is a good sign that systemic racism truly is a thing of the past.
This week’s photo was taken on the Lewis Peak trail in Weber County, Utah
