Why We Should Still Call a Spade a Spade

Commentary

Quite by chance, I came across an interesting article on the website of National Public Radio (NPR). It was interesting because it was deeply revealing of our current state of mind and culture.

The article asked whether it was still socially appropriate, permissible, or wise to use the expression “to call a spade a spade.” This was because spade was once a slang, derogatory term for a black man.

The article concluded, “Rather than taking the chance of unintentionally offending someone or of being misunderstood, it is best to relinquish the old innocuous proverbial expression all together.”

Now I should say at once that I am not in favor of gratuitously giving offense or insulting people. I dislike what I see as the increasingly swift resort to insult on social media, as if insult were the highest form of argument and vehemence of expression were a guarantee of sincerity and depth of feeling. My rule would be, “Think before you offend.”

However, this is not quite the same as the total avoidance of giving offense to others. Any opinion at all is likely to offend someone. We cannot avoid the expression of an opinion simply because someone will be offended by it.

Moreover, it is obvious that the taking of offense is not self-justifying. Some people have the hide of a rhinoceros, while others are so thin-skinned that they might as well have no skin at all. Some laugh off insult, while others detect insult in the blandest of comments.

Oddly enough, the advice given at the end of the article on the NPR website is so condescending to ordinary people that it could almost be regarded as insulting. It suggests that ordinary people are unable to distinguish the context in which something is said.

Let us suppose that, in the course of a conversation, I have not made myself clear to you, perhaps because I have employed euphemism or imprecision of language. I then say, “I am going now to call a spade a spade.” Surely it would be obvious to anyone with a grasp of colloquial English that what I meant was that, in calling a spade a spade, I was no longer going to beat about the bush, that I was going to use very plain language?

If my interlocutor, or anyone who overheard me, were then to say, “You are insulting black men,” would I not be justified in thinking him paranoid and that he ought to consult a doctor? No sensible person would think that I intended any insult to anyone by those words.

The advice given in the article supposes that some percentage of the population is incapable of discerning the context in which words or phrases are used. This is unflattering to their intelligence. It assumes that they are incapable of elementary judgment. Moreover, it also assumes that the avoidance of giving such people offense is of great importance. A speaker has an infinite duty to avoid giving offense, but a listener or a hearer has no duty whatever to be reasonable or to keep his sense of outrage under control.

If we are obliged to alter our language so as not to take the chance of offending someone, we shall never speak without anxiety, except to those whom we know well and can trust, and discussion will become impossible. It hands to people, or groups of people, an informal right of censorship over us. We shall live in a kind of Soviet Union, but one without a Politburo. At least in the Soviet Union, freedom was restricted by the imposition of a centralized dictatorial power; in the contemporary West, the impulse to censor wells up from elements in the population itself.

Many of the aggrieved are somewhat like the jealous as Emilia describes them in “Othello”: “The jealous are not ever jealous for the cause,/ But jealous for they’re jealous.” A sense of grievance often precedes a cause of it or survives long after its cause has disappeared and, therefore, remains on the lookout for something to latch on to to explain its existence.

A person offended by the expression “to call a spade a spade” is obviously on the lookout for something to be offended about. It all but follows from this that no amount of tinkering with the language, no exclusion of certain supposedly offensive expressions, will assuage him. No sooner will one supposed cause of offense be eliminated than another will be found, and so on ad infinitum.

Outrage, in fact, has a tendency to grow with the attempts to assuage it. Instead of saying, “Don’t be so silly,” to the people who work themselves up into outrage over nothing, they try to appease them but never reach the final demand, the fulfillment of which will satisfy outrage.

The fact is that, in an age of victimhood, outrage is taken to be its own justification—or at least the outrage of some “protected” groups. The feeling of outrage is, in some ways, pleasurable. It assures him who feels it that he is a moral person, that he truly cares for the state of the world. Outrage confers a psychological advantage on the outraged over the non-outraged. The non-outraged person immediately wonders what morally relevant feature of the world he is missing and whether, in not sharing the outrage, he is adding to the reasons for it. He begins to feel guilty.

The outraged person considers himself more alive to the wrongs and injustices of the world than the person who expresses none. The latter is at best complacent about the wrongs and injustices and at worst complicit with them. He is likely as a result to develop anger of his own, for no one likes to live in an atmosphere of constant accusation. He might even start to develop the very characteristics, thoughts, feelings, and ways of expressing himself that the outrage is supposed to be about in the first place. A vicious circle of outrage and counter-outrage is thus set up.

There is only one way to avoid further descent on a downward spiral: to refuse to take yet another step down it, in this case by taking no notice of the advice in the NPR article to never call a spade a spade.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.