The Language of Justice: Why Words Still Matter

Every generation of justice movements has had to fight, in part, over language. The right to name one's own experience — to describe oppression in terms that accurately reflect its structure and severity — has always been contested. Those who benefit from the status quo have every interest in keeping the language vague, sanitized, and non-threatening.

Consider the difference between 'riot' and 'uprising,' between 'illegal alien' and 'undocumented person,' between 'pro-life' and 'anti-abortion.' These are not merely stylistic choices. They are political choices that carry embedded assumptions about who is legitimate, who is human, and what kinds of responses are warranted.

Critics of careful language use sometimes argue that it is merely symbolic — that changing words changes nothing structural. But this misunderstands how ideology works. Structural change requires cultural change, and cultural change happens, in part, through language. Movements build new words because they are building new worlds.

None of this means that language work is sufficient. It is not. But it is also not trivial. The poets and the organizers have always understood each other, even when their methods differed. They are both, in different ways, in the business of making the invisible visible — of saying what has not been said, so that what has not been done might become possible.