No Name Calling
Those of us who were blessed with the task of raising children likely taught them an important lesson:
No name calling.
We taught our kids this lesson for the same reason there is an official week dedicated to the effort (No Name-Calling Week) … to instill an attitude of universal respect for each and every human being.
Name-calling, unfortunately, has not been eradicated or for that matter even significantly reduced in spite of our parental strictures. Undoubtedly the lessons may have been poorly taught, or in some cases not taught at all. But perhaps there is a different explanation, one that makes it extraordinarily difficult to defeat the evil name-calling beast. To the detriment of us all, an escape clause seems to have been culturally activated:
It’s not only acceptable, but mandatory, to call someone a name they deserve.
Disappointment, frustration, and anger are among the many emotional triggers for name-calling. Intense emotions have a way of engendering undesirable actions. But that’s an explanation, not an excuse. In fights with a spouse or other loved one, we all know that name-calling rarely helps. As parents, we learned that calling our children names out of anger or frustration harmed their emotional development.
I’ll have to admit to my own failures at keeping those perverse name-calling frogs from jumping out of my mouth. But I try. I do my best to only share my name-calling moments with one of the dogs. They have both proven to be exceedingly good at keeping secrets. It doesn’t seem to bother them much either, so long as they get dinner on time.
But you might say, if someone actually is an asshole, shouldn’t it be alright to call them that? No, it’s not. It’s not alright because it’s personally and unnecessarily offensive. Isn’t that what we taught the kiddos? Even though a particular name might be deemed accurate, attaching a derogatory epithet to a human being reeks of just the sort of schoolyard taunting we worked so hard to erase from our children’s behavior. Not a good example.
Name-calling, at its core, is an intent to shame. Shame, as opposed to guilt, is felt as a blight on one’s very being. Telling someone what they did was wrong is different from telling them that there is something wrong with them. While we deserve to feel guilty, we do not deserve to be shamed. One can deal with the repercussions of guilty actions. Shaming is a matter of soul.
I’m not suggesting that we don’t call out, in even forceful ways, reprehensible actions (including speech) of others. Such acts deserve to be called out, resisted, and stopped whenever possible. People deserve to feel guilty for abhorrent behaviors. But no one deserves to be shamed.
There is another form of name-calling that we should guard against as well, a softer form that serves to stereotype … our political names for example. You know the ones I’m talking about: Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal. In our polarized duopolistic political environment, these have become ways of dividing us into two — and only two — bins, mostly serving to simply separate us from them.
Our name-calling-enhanced polarization, as with other forms of stereotyping behavior, inevitably invites misperceptions about entire groups of people, and by association individuals we know and love. A 2019 More in Common / YouGov poll revealed just how deeply distorted Democrats and Republicans view each other. For example, Democrats believe that only around 50% of Republicans believe racism still exists in America. Around 80% of Republicans actually believe this is true. Likewise, Republicans believe that around 85% of Democrats believe that most police are bad people. Fewer than 50% of Democrats actually believe this is true.
These misperceptions expose the heart and depth of our political polarization. It would behoove all of us to remind ourselves that adherents of each major political party are not monolithic in their political views. And we should also regularly remind ourselves that they’re our family members, friends, and neighbors.
The reason we admonished our children for name calling is the same reason we should admonish ourselves. Name-calling too easily leads to stereotyping which too easily leads to bigotry which too easily leads to hate. How about we stop this progression at its source?
