Judging Others By the Names We Call Them

Once you label me, you negate me.
     Soren Kierkegaard 

This morning we had a discussion on how we often unconsciously put labels on people without even recognizing that we do. We have the tendency to put a person’s circumstances, color, class distinction, job, disease, disability first before we look at someone simply as a person first.

We’ll say the “poor man”. The “old woman”. The “disabled child”. The “troubled teenager”. The “fat dad”. The “divorced mother”. The fact that they are people is placed last. Their situation – what they done or not, what they live with and are challenged by – is placed first. The result is to, in effect, diminish them as persons.

One of our good friends just returned from spending a semester abroad. She recalls asking a cab driver for a ride and because she was speaking English and not the language of that country, the cabbie spit upon her and the friend she was with, twice. He labeled them because of where he thought they came from, judging them harshly without knowing them at all. In effect, diminishing them as persons.

There are so many more examples that we could give, so many that you could name too. But judging that is perpetuated by labeling is a common – and unfortunate problem. We can begin to change that very easily. It starts simply with awareness of how we use language, of how we label others. Some call it the “ethical use of language”, being aware of and intentional about putting people first when we talk about them, not their situation, saying:

The man who lives in poverty, instead of the poor man.
The woman who is older, instead of the old woman.
The child who lives with disability, instead of the disabled child.
The teenager who lives with challenges, instead of the troubled teenager.
The dad who lives with obesity, instead of the fat dad.
The mom who is single, instead of the divorced mom.

It’s a check of our motives when they think first about the way we describe people. Why do we do that to others, say so much that actually diminishes them? It gets back to the point we’ve been trying to make – we are often not comfortable enough in our own skin. And not just that we are not comfortable in our own skin, but that we do not ultimately see everyone as having their own inherent worth and value, as well.

As people who have worked with a lot of others who have served on mission trips or who have done work with the intention of helping others, we often hear people saying that they are going to serve the “less fortunate”, the “impoverished”, the “downtrodden”, the “homeless”. In fact, we have at times wrongly and insensitively used some of those terms ourselves. Those expressions have an elitist ring to them because they imply that we assume we are better than others. It’s the unspoken thought behind our language. It’s easy for us to categorize others, placing them in boxes, comparing our boxes to theirs, and if their boxes are further away, smaller, less opulent or, in our opinion less pretty than our ours, we seem to have to “rescue” them from themselves.

But ultimately it’s about seeing the value in everyone, about seeing them as people first and foremost, and not seeing them through the prism of their disabilities, diseases, circumstances or stations in life. A part of our mission is to remind ourselves, daily, of that inherent value in us all, and it is then to show the world that each of us has something to offer, each of us simply because of our existence are worthy and gifted and uniquely created.