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Anti-racist Word Finder
A dialogue on language for a more inclusive society
I grew up in Seattle — on traditional Coast Salish land — in the ’60s and ’70s. As a child, I didn’t truly understand the counterculture protests and the civil rights movement. Still, I saw that music, fashion, and hairstyles were changing — and with them, attitudes.
I was — and still am — a White, privileged middle-class kid who lived in a predominantly White, privileged middle-class neighborhood. My day-to-day adventures were relatively unrestricted, as my parents deemed it “safe” within the confines of our more massive arterial city block to visit any of my friends who lived within the same radius. But only one close friend lived inside the border: Chris, a White, privileged, middle-class kid like me.
To visit my other two close friends, Kenji (whose parents were from Japan) and David (the son of two Black engineers), my parents had to drive me to their homes. We played, ate each other’s family dishes, and had sleepovers. But things got weird at school and birthday parties; I noticed several off-color comments, mostly from teachers and parents.
One day, all three of us hung out at Chris’ house. Over lunch, his parents asked Kenji if he had “learned any foreign languages, like Japanese.” I watched his face tense and relax as he politely replied, “I know a few words, but since I was born here, I really only speak English.”
At 10 years old, I knew that there was a nuance in the question I didn’t understand. I asked Kenji about it later. His answer was simple and memorable: “Japanese isn’t a foreign language; it’s another language.”
I heard it: The word “foreign” meant you were an outsider, not one of us, untrusted. Even today, the term is used negatively: How antibodies detect “foreign invaders,” how governments treat “foreign workers,” and how Canada feels “foreign yet familiar.”
Language constantly changes. And while words have the power to represent the tremendous diversity of our society, even commonly used words can cause confusion and controversy. As recent ad campaigns for Black Lives Matter show, language can be deliberately used to engage and support communities or inflame and divide them.
