Reply #11: I disagree [View All]

[imenja]

It's possible to denounce policies without words that signal superiority. "Primitive" in comparison to what? A backwater? Meaning inconsequential, insignificant.

I don't at all dispute your outrage toward the policy. But for you to make that point effectively it isn't necessary to condemn an entire nation and its people in terms that, whether or not your recognize it, signal your own sense of cultural and political superiority.

Anyone from a developing nation has heard such terms to refer to their countries with great regularity. It's the sort of language the American corporate executives and US government officials used during the first three quarters of the twentieth century to speak of nations and people's whose lands they dominated both economically and politically. Those are the precise terms that have long been used to refer especially to nations populated by people of color. You may consider my caution mere political correctness, but remember that this website is visited by people from around the globe. I simply ask you to consider whether you want them to see Americans, even on the left, as ethnocentric and disrespectful.

Language is full of meaning that even the speaker doesn't always recognize. Bush unthinkingly used the word "crusade," yet that simple word caused great offense in the Muslim world. I am more sensitive to such issues since I have lived outside of the United States, but I can assure you any Sudanese, including the women who are the victims of human rights abuse, would feel gravely offended by hearing themselves referred to as a "primitive backwater." It is for you to decide if that matters to you.