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The Power of Co-Opting: Language Is Changing, But Will It Change the Status Quo? [upendmovement.org]

 

By Joanna Lack, Alan Dettlaff, and Kristen Weber, UpEND, April 7, 2022

Language is powerful. The words we use signal how we make sense of the world – and people – around us. When we use the term “people of color,” it signals that we have defined diversity against a standard of Whiteness. When we describe people as “disadvantaged,” we diminish the fullness of their humanity and de-emphasize the unjust systems that shape those words. And when we call a system that surveils, regulates, punishes, and forcibly separates families a “child welfare system,” we misconstrue that system’s purpose and actions.

That is why the upEND Movement, along with our fellow advocates engaging in abolition work, has been intentional in our use of language. We use terms that point to societal failures rather than individualizing blame and pathologizing groups of people. We use the term family policing system as we, in community, help grow a movement to abolish it. We describe the tools of that system using words like coercive and controlling, and we call their use acts of violence and oppression.

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