Definitions

Crime (kraɪm), noun: A term the media is uncritically (or in some cases, intentionally) using, during a period when “crime” is up nationwide, to describe a range of activities the legal system has deemed undesirable—a range so sprawling and varied that it’s effectively meaningless as a category. The term evokes violent crime, which in turn evokes fear. But the reality is that most crimes are nonviolent acts like theft and drug possession. In a single syllable, “crime” reduces a panoply of social problems, including poverty, mental illness, and addiction, to their harmful outcomes. And through this linguistic process, the empathy these problems evoke, and the system-level solutions many people associate with them, are extruded, leaving only a word freighted with morality and associated with one, too-simple-to-be-true solution: criminal justice.

Criminal justice (ˈkrɪm ə nl ˈdʒʌs tɪs, noun phrase): An actually, when you think about it, Orwellian term that, nevertheless, almost everyone uses to describe our system for addressing “crime.” Even organizations whose mission is the reform of the “criminal justice” system—whose very reason for being is the many injustices of the system—usually use this term. It’s understandable why: The institutions that rely on the term for their authority use it so consistently that they nearly deprive us of synonyms. For example, the government agencies that oversee the system are Departments of Justice, and a judge sitting on the system’s highest court is, themself, a Justice. Despite this Newspeak, though, we do have synonyms: for the Foucaultians and brainy abolitionists, the carceral system, and for the rest of us, simply, the criminal legal system. Let’s not sully the word “justice,” then, by associating it with a system that delivers retribution and reinforces racism.

Racism (ˈreɪ sɪz əm, noun): A single word, whose meaning it is existentially important for Americans to understand, but which refers to at least three distinct concepts: individual, conscious racial prejudice; individual, unconscious racial bias; and systemic racism. These concepts are not only distinct from one another, but have different (if related) remedies and imply different levels of personal responsibility. As a result, for Americans without a copy of Antiracist Baby on their kid’s bookshelf—that is to say, for most Americans—the word is easily misunderstood, as is its call to action. For instance, “racism” as in, “racial disadvantages created centuries ago and compounded over generations” can and often is taken to mean, “personal animus against people of color.” The latter requires nothing more than condemnation of the most obvious and virulent form of racism; the former demands ongoing effort to advance racial equity in the institutions and systems of which we are a part. The use of one word to mean both—and more—is an antiracist communications disaster.

Right? (raɪt, interjection): A quasi-rhetorical question increasingly being “asked” at the end of what are, in fact, statements—for example: “We know that the use of one word, racism, to mean two different things is an antiracist communications disaster—right?” “Right?” is gradually supplanting “You know?” as the go-to interjection for anxious speakers feeling like they need to check in with their audience. But whereas “You know?”—short for, “Do you know what I mean?”—merely asks the listener for confirmation of their understanding, “Right?” demands, and usually just assumes, agreement. It only pretends to seek consent, and thus violates it. Period.

JF