Words and Social Status

Just as we can skew our moral response to mice, we can do the same with people. Labeling German soldiers "Krauts" during World War II served to lessen their moral standing as human beings. It is difficult to kill someone, even in a just battle, if you consider them your moral equal. Anthropologists call this process of devaluing the moral standing of human beings "dehumanization." And, dehumanization is usually signaled in speech.

By dehumanizing someone we try to give ourselves a sense of power over them. When someone attributes less than human qualities to someone else, it means that they believe they are in some way better than that person, and should have greater privileges and rights than they do. Thus the terms "Negro" and "nigger" were used by slave owners to suggest that those they enslaved were somehow inferior, and that it was all right to cancel out for them the fundamental rights embodied in the phrase "We hold this truth to be self evident, that all men are created equal." Indeed, Thomas Jefferson, who penned these words, was himself a slave owner.

As a people we like to think that we have overcome this horrendous chapter in our past, and the word itself has taken on the form of a taboo in popular discourse. Even when people discuss the evils of this word in a civil context, the negative connotations associated with it compel them not to use it. Instead they often refer to "the N-word."

Exercise

What other words can you think of that are used to dehumanize groups of people?

As you can see, the definitions of words can change over time. The framers of our constitution attributed a different meaning to the word "men," as it appears in the constitution, than we do today. Below are other kinds of persons that were present in our country at the time these words were written. Were they afforded the same status as the men who wrote our Constitution and Bill of Rights? Click the cursor on what you think is the proper response.

Women:

Native Americans: