Did you know that the Sierra Club has a handbook called the “Equity Language Guide?” They are not alone. The American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Psychological Association, the AMA, National Recreations and Parks Association, and University of Washington all have similar guides on what to say when your primary objective appears less to convey a truth, than to avoid any possibility of offending any one in any way.

George Packer is a staff writer for The Atlantic. He’s one of those delightful writers: like Jill Lepore; Elizabeth Kolbert; and Adam Gopnick, whose prose is so sharp, and observations so clear, that I read any article that lists his byline. All of these writers are direct descendants of America’s godfather of non-fiction essays: John McPhee. But I digress…

Dispatches, The Atlantic’s Opening Statement, April 2023: “The Moral Case Against Euphemism,” is a witty yet unsettling exposé on the politically correct (a term no longer correct) language police. We all probably know better than to use the word “Oriental” to describe anything that’s not a rug, or “welfare queen” to describe anyone at all. Yet, the hamstrung writers for Sierra Club cannot use “urban,” “vibrant,” “hardworking,” or “brown bag” because, I gather, each connotes racism. Who knew that all those years I was a hardworking architect living in a vibrant urban community, brown bagging my lunch each day, I was inadvertently offending.

Everyone would benefit by reading the entire article, but are the Cliff Notes:

– banning words won’t make the world more just

– censorship in the name of progressive ideals is still censorship

– the careful tiptoeing of equity language actually distances the speaker/writer from reality

– it is a symbolic gesture that pretends to be a concrete action

“Prison does not become a less brutal place by calling someone locked up in one ‘a person experiencing the criminal justice system.’”

As an example, Mr. Packer offers an equity language translation of a passage from Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a story of Mumbai slum dwellers. The original passage:

The One Leg’s given name was Sita. She had fair skin, usually an asset, but the runt leg had smacked down her bride price. Her Hindu parents had taken the single offer they got: poor, unattractive, hardworking, Muslim, old—“half-dead, but who else wanted her,” as her mother once said with a frown.

Mr. Packer’s equity language translation:

Sita was a person living with a disability. Because she lived in a system that centered whiteness while producing inequities among racial and ethnic groups, her physical appearance conferred an unearned set of privileges and benefits, but her disability lowered her status to potential partners. Her parents, who were Hindu persons, accepted a marriage proposal from a member of a community with limited financial resources, a person whose physical appearance was defined as being different from the traits of the dominant group and resulted in his being set apart for unequal treatment, a person who was considered in the dominant discourse to be “hardworking,” a Muslim person, an older person. In referring to him, Sita’s mother used language that is considered harmful by representatives of historically marginalized communities.

Now, which passage gives us more insight—and empathy—into Sita?