7

Recognize Pain Points

AFTER RAYMOND FINISHED his presentation, his new colleague Madeline came up to the front of the room. “Wow, I didn’t expect you to know all that European history,” she said. “And you’re so articulate! I’m really impressed.”

Raymond gave her a tight smile and muttered, “Thanks.” He couldn’t believe that he was hearing the same pseudo-compliments once again.

First was the surprise that someone like him, a Black man, could actually have deep knowledge of European history. Was that sort of knowledge supposed to be limited to people of European descent? Was he expected to have studied African history? Or African American history?

And second was the surprise encoded in the phrase “you’re so articulate.” Sure, he had kept the jargon minimal, but he hadn’t said anything particularly fancy. It wasn’t like he had just given a dramatic slam poetry performance or come up with elaborate and lyrical phrases.

Raymond had heard this “compliment” so many times that he had known for decades that there was an unspoken second part. What Madeline had said out loud was, “You’re so articulate.” The less complimentary and implicit follow-up was “ . . . for a Black person.”

Madeline probably thought she was being genuinely complimentary when she went up to Raymond to say these things to him.

But they landed badly. Because her compliments were actually rooted in stereotypes and bias. And they hit sore spots that had been bruised many times before.

COMPLIMENTS SHOULD LAND WELL

In principle, a compliment should be one of the most positive and pleasant things you can say to someone. Research by neuroscientists shows that compliments and monetary rewards are processed in similar ways by our brains—in other words, getting a compliment can feel as good as getting free money.¹

Compliments are an example of prosocial behavior.² The opposite of antisocial behavior, prosocial behavior involves helping others, what you might call acts of kindness. These include assisting, sharing with, comforting, and protecting people. Prosocial behavior builds and strengthens relationships. And it benefits everyone—both the people on the receiving end and the people on the giving end.³

But not all compliments are as prosocial as you might think. That’s because some compliments, like “you’re so articulate!” aren’t straightforward praise. Instead, they encode bias. Bias that the person giving the compliment often doesn’t realize they’re expressing.

• • •

Let’s dig a little deeper into articulate and why Madeline’s pseudo-compliment was so unpleasant for Raymond.

Language reflects our mental models of the world. How we categorize things and how we categorize people. Bias is everywhere in our mental models.

And in a commonly found mental model, the category of people who are able to speak coherently, fluently, and in the standard dialect does not include people who are Black.

We tend to comment on things that are surprising. And when someone Black speaks coherently, fluently, and in the standard dialect, it can be a surprise to people with that biased categorization.

I bring up the example of articulate as a problematic compliment all the time in workshops and office hours. And I get the same kinds of volunteered responses, again and again, from Black attendees who have been called articulate in pseudo-compliments. They fall into two categories.

1. Education. For example, “I can’t tell you how often people are shocked to learn I have not only a college degree, I also have a master’s. I think they assume someone who looks like me is uneducated.”

2. Language variety. For example, “People are often surprised by how well I speak. And how white I sound to them. I think they expect me to speak ‘broken English’ or use slang all the time.”

In Chapter 3, I talked about unconscious demotions. This is my label for the snap judgment people make when they assume someone has a lower-level job than their real position. In my data collection, which is centered on the US, I’ve found that Black people get unconsciously demoted more than anyone else. What’s more, they get demoted to lower assumed positions than anyone else. For example, down to cleaning staff instead of doctor, or down to criminal defendant instead of lawyer.

These demotions point to the same biased mental models and the same lowered expectations that produce compliments like “you’re so articulate.” In these mental models, Black folks aren’t showing up in the set of people who are doctors and lawyers. Who are educated. Who hold high-prestige and high-powered jobs.

So that’s the education component. It’s pretty easy to disprove the biased assumption that Black people aren’t educated. But when it comes to dialects and language varieties, things can get a little more complicated.

That’s because it’s common for people to make judgments about language based on what we call language ideologies. In other words, when we’re growing up, we don’t just learn the grammar of our language. We also learn a set of beliefs about languages and dialects and speakers. Things like what kind of language is “good” or “bad,” what’s “grammatical” or “ungrammatical,” what’s “appropriate” or “inappropriate.” In linguistic anthropology, we spend a lot of time examining these sets of beliefs and mapping out how they relate to the scientific realities of language. What we usually find is that people walk around with a lot of false assumptions and make value judgments that seem to be, but actually aren’t, about language. (This is true for every country and every language I’ve ever read about in the study of language ideologies.) Instead, our judgments tend to be based on cultural biases that are then applied to language.

In recent years, a new field called raciolinguistics has been focusing on how language shapes our ideas about race, and how race plays a role in how we interpret, judge, and value different language varieties.⁴ (Similarly, a new field known as crip linguistics looks at the same kinds of interpretations, judgments, and values for disabled ways of communicating.)

In the US, the standard dialects of English, which are high prestige, are associated with whiteness. So, when Black people speak standard English, they are often told they “sound white.” Or white people express surprise that they speak that high-prestige dialect. Barack Obama, who is articulate in every possible sense of the word, was often called “articulate” simply because he spoke the standard dialect. Meanwhile, his white colleagues and political opponents who also spoke the standard dialect did not have their language variety commented on at all.

What’s more, ways of speaking that index Black Americans are often falsely judged as ungrammatical. As “broken English” or “a collection of errors.” Or as being “just slang.”

But the dialects known as African American English are just as grammatical, just as systematic, and just as “good” as standard dialects of English. (Note that African American English is also called African American Language, a term that I actually prefer for linguistic reasons I don’t have the space to get into here.)

Let’s say aliens arrived and one of the first things they wanted to know was the grammatical rules of all the dialects of English. (It could happen.)

If linguists wrote up descriptions of all the different dialects of English and didn’t say which ones were the standard in their region, the aliens would never be able to guess. If you went by grammatical description only, each dialect would be clearly seen as equally complex and equally valid. It’s only cultural context and bias that lead people to judge some dialects as inferior.

For people who weren’t raised speaking African American English, it can be hard to recognize that there are rules. For example, they might not see that speakers aren’t randomly using be. In the sentence, “It be like that,” the verb be isn’t random or an error. It’s being used to grammatically express that something is invariant or habitual.

People who don’t speak this variety of English also usually believe it’s a mistake to say something like “I’da been said leave.” (This was famously said in a Missy Elliot song to a fictionalized Beyoncé about her fictional boyfriend.) But that been is expressing what linguists call remote aspect. Here, it means that an action or a state started a long time ago and is still relevant. The standard English equivalent might be, “I would have started telling you to leave a long time ago and would have continued to this day.” That been is doing a lot of heavy grammatical lifting in a very tidy and efficient package.

When people who don’t speak this language variety try and “speak Black,” they often make real grammatical mistakes. The same kind of mistakes people make when they’re learning another language, like Spanish or Mandarin, and haven’t learned the new grammar yet.

Saying “you’re so articulate” is based on these two biased and inaccurate mental models: 1) Black people aren’t educated, and 2) Black language varieties are ungrammatical and not legitimate ways of speaking. So, when someone expresses surprise that a person is educated and can speak in the standard dialect? That’s an expression of bias and not a real compliment.

• • •

A man gives a conference talk from his wheelchair. Afterward, several people stop him and say, “Your talk was so inspiring!”

A woman with cerebral palsy is told by her office mate, “Oh, you take the subway to work each morning? Aren’t you brave !”

A person is working out at the gym. Their shorts reveal two prosthetic legs. The guy next to them turns and says, “Look at you here, working out. You’re an inspiration to us all. No excuses for the rest of us!”

In principle, these are all compliments. So why are they problematic?

In Chapter 4, I covered a few issues that arise when people talk with or about a disabled person. How disabled people are often ignored, insulted, or presumed incompetent. The lowered expectations that come with being presumed incompetent are related to another form of problematic language called inspiration porn, a term coined by disability activist Stella Young.⁵

In brief, perceptibly disabled people are often called inspirational or brave just for doing regular, everyday things. In addition, people living without disabilities are often portrayed as heroes or charitable when they do things for disabled people—like electing a girl with Down syndrome to be prom queen or taking a man with cerebral palsy for a ride in a Lamborghini.

When a disabled person does something a “typical” person does, like give a conference talk, take a subway to work, or exercise at a gym, this can feel surprising for many, and they might say something like “Oh, you’re such an inspiration!” Which tells us that they don’t expect a disabled person to be competent or capable.

The truth is, disabled folks often have to navigate a whole host of obstacles that people without disabilities never face (or even consider) just to do “regular” things. Like get takeout, take public transit to a concert, or access and use a company website. And telling someone with cerebral palsy that they’re brave to take the train might be intended to acknowledge that fact.

But that’s not how this kind of compliment usually comes across. Instead, it seems to imply to someone that they’re not actually competent. And that it is surprising that they can manage even the most basic tasks.

• • •

When it comes to pseudo-compliments that point to inappropriately low expectations, it’s a good idea to “flip it to test it.” If the person you’re going to compliment had a different identity, would you still compliment them in the same way?

For example, if you’re going to tell someone Black that they’re articulate, would you say the same thing if they were white or East Asian? Or if you’re going to tell someone disabled they’re an inspiration, would you say the same thing if they weren’t living with a disability?

Chances are good that you wouldn’t. Which means you can limit your compliments to things that are actually praiseworthy; this way, you won’t upset people by unintentionally expressing your lowered expectations.

“I love how you articulated such a complex idea so clearly, using terms that everybody could understand. I came in not getting this and thanks to you, I feel like I really get it now.”

“I can’t believe you managed to write a book while raising two kids and working full time. Not to mention all the obstacles you have to deal with as a wheelchair user. You’re so impressive.”

These are compliments that are about actually impressive things, and they are the kinds of compliments that should land well. But if you want to err on the side of safety, maybe just avoid articulate and inspiration altogether.

THINK BEYOND WHITE AND WESTERN HISTORY

On Valentine’s Day of 2022, I got an unexpected Valentine’s-related email in my business account.

“Suzanne, this was posted on our Slack channel today as an example of humor. Even after the anti-bias training we just finished up with you! I can’t believe they didn’t realize how inappropriate this is.”

The sender works at one of my client sites, and her parents grew up in China and survived the Cultural Revolution. She had attached a screenshot of a Slack post where her colleague had written this:

Below the text was an image of Dictator Valentines. When I posted about this on LinkedIn and used the image, a few people DMed me to say that it was too upsetting to just see it in their feed, and I should replace it with something else. So instead of the image, I’ll just describe to you.

There are eight black and white photos of “dictators” overlaid with a pink or red filter and white meme-style text. (San serif, all caps. I don’t want to shout, so I’ll write out the text without using all caps like the original.)

This is problematic from a historical perspective because neither Trotsky nor Marx were dictators. So it shows a real lack of knowledge when it comes to European history and the Soviet Union.

It’s also problematic from an inclusive language perspective because these Dictator Valentines lightly reference painful history and themselves cause pain. I’m almost positive that these Valentines were created and posted by people who were not personally affected by any of the dictators in question. (Again, Trotsky and Marx were never autocratic heads of state.)

The coworker who put this up in Slack probably hasn’t lost whole branches of their family to genocidal murder. Or to famine forced by the state.

They haven’t seen the anguish in their parents’ faces when they talk about how they survived the Cultural Revolution—and about the people who didn’t.

They don’t have aunts and uncles lost behind the borders of North Korea, possibly starving or in forced labor camps.

They haven’t lost relatives to escape attempts via raft or to Cuban prisons.

And they haven’t lost grandparents to ethnic massacres in Uganda or had family who uprooted their entire lives and fled when Indians were expelled from the country.

Instead, this coworker was someone who was “just joking.”

Back in Chapter 2, I wrote about what is happening with “just joking.” To sum up, “just joking” suggests that because there is a humorous framing, nothing is inappropriate.

So if someone says there’s a problem, it’s actually their problem. They’re oversensitive. They need to lighten up.

This is a failure of perspective taking.

Let’s say you learn a really funny joke about a plane crash. You’ve never lost anyone to a plane crash, so for you it’s just funny.

You might tell the joke to close friends who you know haven’t been affected by plane crashes. But if, right as you’re about to tell the joke, a friend shows up who lost a sibling in a plane crash, you’re probably not going to tell the joke anymore.

And if you live in a place where a lot of people were affected by a plane crash, you might stop telling the joke altogether, because you never know who it would be painful for. “I don’t want to remind someone of a terribly upsetting thing just for the sake of a joke,” you might think as you decide to put it on the shelf for a while.

Well, same thing for jokes like Dictator Valentines. They weren’t distressing to the person who posted them. But you can’t assume that your own experience is universal: “This isn’t upsetting for me, so it must not be upsetting for anyone else.”

This is a failure of perspective taking. And it caused some real people real distress on a morning that they just expected to log in, check their Slack, and get to work.

There is a difference between in-group comedy and comedy like this. If people who were affected by a dictator or genocide or famine or expulsion want to use “dark humor” to cope with it, I’m all for it. Humor is powerful in all kinds of ways.

But comedy that lightly references other people’s pain isn’t funny. And it certainly has no place at work.

• • •

In 2003, vendors who provided equipment to LA County received a message about terminology. The message noted that the county was committed to a “work environment that is free of any discriminatory influence be it actual or perceived.” And, with that goal in mind, they asked their vendors to make a change:

The tech industry in the US has long been dominated by white people, for whom the flavor of master/slave was unproblematic. It had no relation to their lives and tasted neutral. So, it became standard terminology for a configuration in which one device or one module controls another.

But LA County had a far more diverse employee base than the tech industry. And many county workers were descendants of enslaved people. For them, the term master/slave didn’t have a neutral flavor. It had the flavor of slavery. Of brutality. Of lack of bodily autonomy. Of torture. Of oppression. And of a system of exploitation that was responsible for economic and cultural disparities that are still in place to this day.

Using the terminology master/slave to describe a technical configuration lightly references painful history and experiences. And it causes distress that could be easily avoided. For LA County, it had caused pain to the point where a Black county employee had filed an official complaint after seeing “master” and “slave” labels on a videotape machine.

There is even a piece of musical equipment called a “universal slave driver.” Here, the driver is referencing communication capabilities, but even so, the phrase “slave driver” has the distinct flavor of enslavement.

So, it is time to move away from master when it is used in the sense of dominating and controlling someone or something else. And to replace slave whenever possible. (When it comes to mastery of a subject or a skill, then the flavor is different. So master class or master a subject or masterful playing are still okay. Although there may come a point in the future where the overall flavor has been so tainted that people start to move away from the word in this sense as well.)

Want to talk about a master/slave technical configuration? You can use primary/secondary instead, or main/secondary. Or leader/follower. Or source/replica. Sometimes the issue is one of scope, so there is global/local. Avoiding problematic terminology often has the additional benefit of greater technical precision.

Want to talk about a master bedroom or master bathroom? You can say primary or main instead.

Want to say someone is a slave driver? You can say stickler or maybe toxic boss.

A quick switch of terminology can avoid unnecessary pain and give texts the neutral or positive flavor you’re looking for.

BE CAREFUL WITH MENTAL HEALTH TERMS

We’re at a moment of increasing sensitivity to mental health and mental illness. But in English, we currently use mental health terms extremely loosely, usually to add intensity to a description.

So you might call someone behaving badly psycho.

Or describe an unexpected situation as totally insane.

Or call someone doing contradictory things schizophrenic.

One reason you might use these words is because there’s a strong stigma around mental health issues. (This is related to the stigma faced by all kinds of disabled people, which I touched on in Chapter 4.) So the flavor of these words involves something like “out of bounds” and “possibly dangerous” and “maybe should be discredited.”

But it’s time to stop casually using mental health terms in a disparaging way. Because it has a negative impact. It trivializes the struggles of people grappling with mental health issues. And it blurs the scientific descriptions of real diagnoses.

For example, let’s say your colleague Amy likes to keep her desk super neat and organized. It helps her concentrate on her work. When talking about Amy, and how much she dislikes when things are out of place, you might say, “You know Amy, she’s so OCD.”

But this does a real disservice to people who actually suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder—which is serious and can be completely debilitating. OCD involves anxiety and an elevated risk of suicide. And it can push people out of the workforce.

Misusing terms like OCD simply to criticize behavior you find annoying or problematic can make it extra difficult for people who have those disorders to seek help. They might not recognize that they’re dealing with something clinical because the term has been used so loosely that people don’t know what the actual symptoms are. And, once diagnosed, they might not be believed or given accommodations because they don’t “act OCD enough.”

In my research, I’ve found a widespread human urge to use really intense intensifiers. An intensifier is a word or phrase that gives emphasis. In English, some common intensifiers are really, very, and extremely. If you say, “I’m tired,” that’s one level of fatigue, and if you say, “I’m really tired,” that’s a more intense level of fatigue.

Once a word becomes an intensifier, it can lose some of its original meaning, its original punch. That’s because it’s becoming a grammar word, kind of like a number or a preposition. And when “regular” words become grammar words, they undergo what’s called semantic bleaching. Most or all of the original meaning gets bleached away.

Terribly doesn’t have any terror left in it, and horribly has very little horror remaining. In the US, we have regional intensifiers like hella and wicked. These words have very little flavor left of hell and wickedness, although the flavor is a bit stronger than in older intensifiers like awfully, where the awe has gone away.

Because we’re looking for intensity to really amplify what we’re saying, that semantic bleaching is an issue. When speakers use words because of their powerful meaning and then that meaning gets bleached away, they start reaching for new words to replace them.

And the intensity and flavor of “out of bounds” and “possibly dangerous” that comes with mental health terminology can be appealing.

So you might hear that the waffles at that place are crazy good. Or that someone’s got mad skills or deserves mad props.

When you want to pack a punch, to use language that feels intense, then mental health terminology really fits the bill.

The problem is that it’s not inclusive. It often promotes misinformation and misconceptions. And it touches on genuinely distressing experiences for many, many people. So, even though we may have that human urge to make things super intense with powerful language, it’s best to use less painful alternatives instead.

Instead of crazy good there’s super good. Instead of totally insane there’s incredibly chaotic. Instead of schizo there’s wildly unpredictable. You can play with new combinations until you find one that you like.

Because the more you can come up with alternatives to language that causes pain, the more inclusive you will be.