GLENN
C.
LOURY
615
listeners. The circumlocution may be intended to
deceille,
or merely to
obsCllre,
but in either case the result is a debasement of the currency of
public discourse.
Consider, for example, some uses of the term "minorities" in con–
temporary American public speech. The speaker may actually mean
"blacks" but find that term embarrassingly specific. (This is usually the
case when the reference is to some aspect of urban life which has nega–
tive connotations.) Or, as in the phrase "women and minorities," the
speaker may hope by the use of words alone to create a coalition of in–
terests in the listener's mind, when none exists in fact. Or finally, consider
a recent addition to the progressive lexicon, "disadvantaged minorities."
One finds this phrase used in educational philanthropy circles when the
speaker really means "non-whites, excluding Asians." Never mind the fact
that many Asians are disadvantaged! Imagine the uproar were a founda–
tion to candidly announce a scholarship program intended
to
help "non–
white persons belonging to groups that perform poorly on standardized
tests. " So the strategic speaker sacrifices honesty and accuracy by declar–
ing instead that the program is aimed at "disadvantaged minorities." (A
variation on this theme is the "under-represented minority" - though
talk of any minority group being "over-represented" is unheard
08.)
SlIch lillgllistic imprecisioll impairs analysis.
But that is often its pur–
pose. The person who utters the phrase "women and minorities" may
want not to reckon with the fact that the majority of women, married
to
white men , share significant resources and fundamental interests in
common with their putative oppressors. An advocate for "diversity" may
prefer not
to
be explicit about which differences are included and which
(religious and political beliefs, for example) are excluded from that advo–
cacy. No sane person could relish the task of explaining to poor but
studious Vietnamese immigrants why they do not qualify for some
"minority" scholarships. And if one wants to accommodate more
"under-represented" black and Hispanic students at a university by admit–
ting fewer whites, but not fewer Asians, then one surely would rather
not dwell on the statistical "over-representation" of the latter.
Yet another feature of censured public speech is that
standing to ad–
dress al1 isslle becomes restricted to a certain class oj persons who halle what I
will call
"Ilatllral COller."
These are people who, because of their group
identity, are not immediately presumed to have malign motives for ex–
pressing themselves in a potentially offensive way. Thus blacks, but not
whites, can make movies or report news stories on the problem of skin
color prejudice which continues to affect Afri can American society.
Women, but not men, can publicly question whether in a given case the
crime of date rape has been manufactured on the morning after by a
