Beware the seeds of supremacy

In communications analysis, we critique word choices that may communicate deeper meanings or hidden beliefs. Words operate much like seeds — when spoken, they are planted — eventually producing the value they represent.

Seeds of supremacy are found not just in extremist dialogue referencing race, the language of supremacy dehumanizes all through ranking systems, biological hierarchies, and elevating one over another.

Seeds of supremacy are carried in the breeze of everyday language; historical idioms, century-old quotes, and traditional sayings, unbeknownst to us, often support a system of supremacy they serve to uphold. Improving our communication skills is more about listening than speaking, it’s about identifying language that paints others as “less than,” undeserving of equal human rights, or with an expectation of performance in order to belong.

We mean “tomato, tomahto” — but we say “pearls to swine” — to paint our words as supreme treasure in comparison to the pig (human) we just gave them to.

We mean “potato, potahto” — but we say “bees don’t waste their time explaining to flies that honey is better than sh-t” — to portray ourselves supreme, like the bee feasting on honey, while the “other,” like the fly, consumes sh-t.

Nazis called Jews rats. White slave owners called black slaves beasts. The Hutus (Rwanda genocide) called the Tutsis cockroaches. European explorers called the Indigenous, savages. This “psychology of cruelty” carries on so long as we refuse to acknowledge the perpetuation of supremacy and do the work to change our language.

If we are serious about discovering how the seeds of supremacy become embedded in our culture, and if we care about dismantling it, we can simply begin paying closer attention to the degrading comparisons we make of fellow human beings, in our everyday language. Communication creates a culture. What we speak, grows. What is produced, only comes to being because we said so.

Tomato, Tomahto. Potato, Potahto. Have a preference. The question is: Can our preference be communicated in ways that don’t dehumanize?

Our words create the world we see.

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Melinda Cadwallader is studying communications science at Lewis-Clark State College in Coeur d’Alene.