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WORDS HAVE POWER
Berkshire Eagle, MA
Editorial
Oct 12 2007
Language and symbols matter. For evidence, look no further than the
furor created by the nooses hung from a schoolyard tree in Jena, La.,
or to the debate in Congress over whether to declare Turkey's mass
killings of Armenians in World War I an act of genocide.
A noose is a talisman of America's racist underpinnings. Its appearance
in the present means the past is still very much alive, not only in the
South but nationally, where we are locked in racial adolescence, unable
to have a mature conversation about our legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
In Congress, politicians are again debating whether the systematic
slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians constitutes genocide. Though many
will dismiss this as a pointless exercise in political correctness,
the outcome of this argument has real consequences. Turkey, always an
insecure nation unsure of its place in the world, has long resisted
any effort to tar her with the word "genocide." Turkey is threatening,
if the resolution passes, to cancel arms deals with the United States
and to end support for the Iraq war.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel - a friend and ally of Martin Luther King Jr.'s -
argued that Christianity's condemnation of Jews in art and in words
helped make the Holocaust possible. In 1961, he tried to convince
the Vatican Council to declare that the Jews were not cursed by God
for the murder of Jesus.
"Speech has power and few men realize that words do not fade," he
wrote. "What starts out as a sound ends in a deed."
If we refuse to call the Jena nooses "racism" or the Armenian slaughter
"genocide," we fail to speak the words that can stop the deed.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/editorials/ci _7155445
Berkshire Eagle, MA
Editorial
Oct 12 2007
Language and symbols matter. For evidence, look no further than the
furor created by the nooses hung from a schoolyard tree in Jena, La.,
or to the debate in Congress over whether to declare Turkey's mass
killings of Armenians in World War I an act of genocide.
A noose is a talisman of America's racist underpinnings. Its appearance
in the present means the past is still very much alive, not only in the
South but nationally, where we are locked in racial adolescence, unable
to have a mature conversation about our legacy of slavery and Jim Crow.
In Congress, politicians are again debating whether the systematic
slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians constitutes genocide. Though many
will dismiss this as a pointless exercise in political correctness,
the outcome of this argument has real consequences. Turkey, always an
insecure nation unsure of its place in the world, has long resisted
any effort to tar her with the word "genocide." Turkey is threatening,
if the resolution passes, to cancel arms deals with the United States
and to end support for the Iraq war.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel - a friend and ally of Martin Luther King Jr.'s -
argued that Christianity's condemnation of Jews in art and in words
helped make the Holocaust possible. In 1961, he tried to convince
the Vatican Council to declare that the Jews were not cursed by God
for the murder of Jesus.
"Speech has power and few men realize that words do not fade," he
wrote. "What starts out as a sound ends in a deed."
If we refuse to call the Jena nooses "racism" or the Armenian slaughter
"genocide," we fail to speak the words that can stop the deed.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/editorials/ci _7155445