How Labelism Hurts Our Society

by Bruce Bennett
Have you ever tried to describe someone without using common labels? In the course of normal conversation I find labels to be a common part of my speech. This observation is more apparent in monitoring blogs and responses or just watching a CNN news program.

People are conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Americans, foreigners. Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Christians, poor, rich, employed and un-employed among a myriad of other descriptions. What makes us so dependent on labeling?

One opinion is that it helps us put everyone in a box and stack the boxes neatly for our own mental inventory. If labeling helps build a strong base for our own beliefs system, then labels themselves are the index cards of our classification of social order.

This week we have another terrible reminder of how labeling people can bring death and sorrow. France mourns the deaths of a number of people who saw their duty as nothing more than to satirize a particular founder of a religious sect. The response was immediate and disastrous. People do not like to be labeled and its getting more dangerous to make fun of particular sects and radical groups.

When we stop thinking about people as being a particular thing then I believe we open up a new world of tremendous opportunity. Is this a conversation you might overhear? "What kind of person do you think you'd like to hire for the job?" "I'd like a person who is bold, adventuresome, a self-starter, independent, honest, forthright, and faithful." "Are you going to hire a minority?" "Of course, I need to fill my quota of labels."

Vietnamese people moved in across the street from me. Sometimes I go over to the square for Chinese food. My friends are a little too liberal for me. They like to talk about the President as though he's done anything good. That's because I think they're Democrats. Not only Democrats, but Catholics.

You see. It's not a new world order, just order. Its always been and in the past existed in a much more malicious format than today. I have a friend who manages the local Burger King. Last month he lost his mother. She lived in Paris and he could not go to the funeral. When he spoke to me about it I became emotional inside for the sake of this genuine person.

When you read that paragraph, you wanted to know more didn't you? To have it truly make sense, I should have described his ethnic or cultural background. In that way, he would fit in one of those boxes. When I talk about him with people I often describe him in a certain way. Every time I do I wonder why that description matters.

How can we inventory people without labeling them? Its impossible. If our society decided tomorrow that people were the same how would something like Ferguson ever happen? We pretend not to be different, but when lines are drawn we step to the side where we are labeled.

At the end of the day I can't see things ever changing. This week I watched the movies Crash and Bulworth once more. I like these movies because they peel aside the defenses and tell the truth. One day, I hope to wake up and find that we all are living together in peace. Till then, good night all my Republican, conservative, white, middle-class, friends.

Bruce Bennett can be reached at click or by e-mailing bbennett@scott-clark.com.