Inclusive language and discrimination, present at the Congress of the Spanish language

One could question about the low presence of women at the organized congress in the country: in the honorary commission chaired by Macri and the king of Spain, there are 15 men and one woman.

March 30, 2019

"The one of you who has no sin, who lays the first stone on him" is a much used phrase of the Gospel according to St. John and the phrase has not lost its validity.

Today, few people openly describe themselves as racists or discriminators. This is largely because of the terrible mbadacres of the 20th century that have marked contemporary history and major international advances in the field of human rights.

Be that as it may, discrimination takes many forms, not always visible to the naked eye, such as the location of separate Coca-Cola machines for whites and blacks, as happened in the United States. United until the 1960s. At that time, openly discriminatory advertising was permitted. Today, in some countries, the state plays a central role in avoiding it, even if a subtly discriminatory and less coarse advertising is still allowed.

The problem, if we can think of a "problem", is that the discriminatory categories have expanded and are no longer simply persecutions against religious, ethnic, racial or minority groups.

The definitions have been modified, largely by the highly discriminatory content of many words and by the search for self-identification. That's what happened with the word "black" in the United States and its "politically correct" conversion into "African-American", but also with the positive appropriation of the word "black" "among the black population against the stigmatization of whites.

Is the language not neutral and never been?

In 2004, American political scientist Samuel Huntington published his controversial book Who are we? The challenges of American national identity with questions that question not only the identity itself but also the relationship with others and others. And if we include "the others", it is because the history of discrimination against women includes language in many languages. It is no coincidence that the debate on "inclusive language" was discussed at the VIII International Congress of the Spanish Language held in Argentina these days, organized by the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) and the Cervantes Institute. And one might wonder why, in the academic committee that organizes it, there are 27 men and only 8 women, and in the honorary commission chaired by the President of Argentina, Mauricio Macri and the King of Spain, Felipe VI, there are 15 men and 1 woman No one noticed this difference?

It does not seem and the evidence is in sight. The RAE is only one of the institutions that has fought against the most inclusive language and, for the moment, opposes the use of "todes" to include more people. To the debate that can exist in Castilian on the use of "all" or "all" to write or speak, in the background, this debate also challenges the journalists, because it forces us to reflect every day on our own tools discursive. the time we mention human groups or news that come from such or such place. Do not we also discriminate when we inform? These are questions, simply to remember what the one who is free from sin launches the first stone.

Note posted on CNN in Spanish