Manipulating Language
The most dangerous weapon isn’t developed in a lab or manufactured at a plant. It is the misuse of language with the intention of influencing our behavior, our decisions, and our beliefs. Language is something we take for granted. We take what is said at face value, never really looking past the spoken or written words to determine what is actually being said. But it plays a huge role in shaping our lives. Two vastly different, but related and relevant examples come to mind.
When we think of a weed, we picture an unwanted guest. A pest. Something that if left unaddressed, will take over. A garden filled with weeds is an unpleasant and messy visual. One that might indicate laziness, or bring embarrassment or shame from your neighbors. But really, isn’t a weed just a plant that has figured out how to grow and survive in any condition without the need for human interventions like watering, pruning, and fertilizing, or the careful placement for just the right amount of sunlight?
By framing a weed as an invasive and unwanted pest with no place in your garden, instead of just a plant, makes it easy to rationalize killing them. Whether that be by force (pulling), fire (blow torch), or poison (like Roundup). I see people all around my neighborhood wearing gloves, and sometimes masks, to protect themselves while they spray Roundup around their property. The desire to kill weeds, programmed in us over decades, outweighs the innate knowledge within us that spraying poison is a bad idea. If you don’t want it on your skin or in your lungs, then why use it at all? Because weeds are pests, and pests need to go.
An illegal immigrant is the human version of a weed. An unwanted and unruly pest that just keeps popping up. Placing the word illegal in front of the word immigrant immediately turns a human seeking refuge and a better way of life into an outlaw with no regard for the rules, and makes it seem more likely that they will commit other illegal acts again in the future. An illegal immigrant sounds dangerous and ruthless. Someone with a checkered past from a sketchy place. But when compared to just an immigrant, what’s the actual difference?
Usually nothing. In both cases, the illegal immigrant and the immigrant fled their country to escape poverty, famine, war, or persecution, maybe all four, and came to this country, or any country, in search of a better life. They both traveled long and far to put themselves and their family in a better position to survive and prosper. Two people from the same town, in the same country, fleeing for the same reasons, and one is illegal, and the other legal, all because of how they got here, and whether or not they received the correct permissions or paperwork. But otherwise they are the same.
Maybe one had the means to get the correct permissions and the other didn’t. Maybe one had the time to wait for the paperwork to come through, and the other person’s situation was so dire that they couldn’t afford to wait or else it might cost them, and their families, their life. There is no difference really. But there is a difference in how we view and accept each of them based on their designation as illegal or legal.
By using the word illegal it makes it easier to accept mistreating them. By using the word illegal it makes it easier to rally support for waging war against them, and the country they came from, and forcing them to leave. And it makes it easier to convince us that we need to spend hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to fix the illegal immigration problem. Money that could have been spent fixing our own communities, instead being spent to round people up and kick them out, when all they wanted to do was come here and work.
In college I once didn’t take a job because I had to explain three different types of butters to the tables I would’ve been waiting on. That’s embarrassing to admit. But these people are willing to put their lives in danger, walking thousands of miles across dangerous terrain and through treacherous jungle, to come here, all because the danger they are trying to escape is greater. And when they get here we tell them no thank you, you did it the wrong way. Go back. Try again. We call ourselves a democratic capitalist society based on meritocracy, but that only applies when we approve of how you’ve come to be here. It doesn’t matter if you’re willing to work longer and hard than the people who are born here (like me).
I say all this, and I realize that the war on illegal immigrants is just as much a facade as it is real. Yes, there are thousands of people actually being detained, arrested, put in jail, or deported. But it’s mostly an act, because the same people who claim to want to close the border and send illegal immigrants back to their home countries, are the same people whose fortunes were built on the exploitation of their cheap labor, and who’s every day lives depends on their presence here. So it’s also just a facade to draw our eyes away from the real tragedies gripping our communities that continue to go unaddressed.
If we’re focused on illegal immigrants, and worried about how they’re infiltrating our country, then we can all rally around illegals as the enemy, and we forget that nothing else is actually getting done. Look around your community and think about what the actual issues are facing you and your neighbors. In my community food insecurity and food deserts are a huge problem. Opioid addiction, substance abuse, and homelessness is another one. Pollution, radiation exposure, and degradation of the land is causing chronic diseases. An aging population who can’t get the help or care they need to maintain an active and productive life. Military veterans either handicapped or traumatized by their experiences without access to resources to get better. That’s what I look around and see, and illegal immigrants have nothing to do with any of it.
Language has always been used to shape the conversations we’re having and influence our beliefs. It is the most deadly weapon in the arsenal because language is what is used to convince us that what we’re seeing and feeling is not actually so. Designating a plant a weed is rationalizes the use of poison around our houses to kill it. Designating a human as illegal rationalizes why they shouldn’t have any rights and don’t belong in this country. Understanding the weaponization of language and it’s impact on our communities is the battle that determines all of the other battles, and it’s the most important one to be aware of.