What shall we call the white minority?
By DeWayne Wickham
"Excuse me, excuse me," called out the woman bearing down on me through the crowd of people that circled the stage after I took part in a recent panel discussion at Duke University. "Can we talk?"
"About what?" I answered.
"Have you ever considered not using that word?"
"What word?"
"Minority," she shot back. "Have you ever thought about not using it?"
The word had been laced throughout my discussion on the impact of race and racism on the media. I'd used it as a catchall term to describe African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans, people the news industry professes to have a special interest in employing and covering.
But Sandra Gibbs, the director of special programs for the National Council of Teachers of English, thought my use of the word was a poor choice, and in a letter I got from her last week, she told me why.
"The word has become so encompassing that its meaning is diluted," she wrote.
"When I hear someone say minority, I say you are not seeing me," she added during a later telephone conversation.
Of course, being seen and heard by the powers that be was what the 1960s civil rights movement was all about. Back then, you didn't need a scorecard to keep up with all the players in the campaign for racial justice.
But as more and more people have laid claim to the victories it produced, or benefited from the spin-off pursuit for social justice, the list of people in this nation's protected class has swelled. That's the point Gibbs wants me to understand.
"Language does not just describe," she said, repeating the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. "It creates."
A descriptive word that fails to describe
In the case of the word "minority," it creates confusion. Confusion over the group's makeup. Confusion about who really benefits from affirmative action and other programs meant to repair the damage done by discrimination.
Gibbs is one of a growing number of black intellectuals and activists who believe it is time to drop the word "minority" from the civil rights lexicon. Where once it simply meant African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans, it is now used loosely to include gays, lesbians, the disabled, the elderly and even white women. As its meaning has expanded, resistance to its use grows.
"What people need to do is to identify who we are talking about, to be very specific," said Sharon Parker, president of American Institute for Managing Diversity in Atlanta.
Jan Armstrong agreed. "We're trying to forge some fresh ways to look at old ideas," said the head of Leadership Development in Interethnic Relations, a Los Angeles-based organization that works to bring about better understanding between that city's many ethnic and racial groups.
Ten years ago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson successfully pushed for people who then labeled themselves "black" to begin calling themselves "African-Americans." Now another change in the language of race is in the offing - and it can't come too soon.
Shift in demographics and language
Sometime after the middle of the next century, whites will lose their majority status in this country. In the Southwest it will happen a lot sooner, but eventually this change will sweep across the nation and reduce the number of white Americans to less than the combined total of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans.
It's time we started preparing for this change.
Just as whites surely won't want to bear the nondescriptive label "minority" when that day comes, many of those who are now defined this way want to get out from under the long shadow the word casts.
The Bureau of the Census has all but abandoned use of the word "minority."
"The problem for us is when you say 'minority,' who are you really taking about?" asked Dwight Johnson, a demographer and public affairs specialist at the Census Bureau. "As much as possible, we stay away from the term."
And so, too, should the rest of us.
Sandra Gibbs is right to recoil at the thought that "minority" has become a shorthand description for a long list of people. Lost in such usage are the differences that define each group - and the understanding that could bring us closer together as a nation.
DeWayne Wickham writes weekly for USA TODAY.
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