Racist expressions have historically characterized many Latin American societies. In Uruguay, some of these expressions hold permanence through the dictionary.
Recently, Oscar Gomez, the Vice Minister of Culture and Education, appealed to the Uruguayan Academy of Letters to purge the Dictionary of Uruguayan Spanish of racist expressions, such as “to work like a black man.” Gomez’s letter is part of a program, “Let’s Erase Racism from Our Language,” which was launched in January 2013 and is sponsored by the Afro-Uruguayan Culture Institute.
The Afro-Uruguayan Culture Institute has also written to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE), urging it to delete expressions from the dictionary that evoke a painful past for certain races. Meanwhile, the Institute and other organizations are urged to work hard to eradicate racist language and expressions from everyday life in schools, on playgrounds, in plazas, and at home. Younger generations should not be able to use these expressions as they could offend and disrupt national integration.
Gomez, on reading the Culture Institute’s letter to the RAE, took the initiative to write his own letter because the Uruguayan dictionary contains more racist expressions than the RAE dictionary. Gomez believes that these expressions continue to be in use in everyday language and younger generations learn them and unwittingly reproduce racist situations and feelings. Expressions such as “como quien peina negro” (as difficult as combing black hair) and “caliente como negra en baile” (hot as a black woman dancing) evoke racially-loaded stereotypes. But their permanence in the source of language, the dictionary, does not help the cause.
However, the President of the Uruguayan Academy of Letters, Adolfo Elizaincin, has emphasized that a dictionary documents how a language is created and how it evolves; so deleting expressions that offend a section of society detracts from the purpose of the dictionary. While he acknowledges the misuse of such expressions in society, Elizaincin is sure that expressions such as ‘working like a black man’ will not be eliminated from the dictionary. He argues that such an action will guarantee more requests from other sections of society to delete expressions that they find offensive, thereby leading to a crisis in the repository of language.
While people like Gomez hope to educate younger generations against racism and racist expressions, Elizaincin’s argument raises legitimate concerns about the state of a language in the midst of such appeals.
Creative Commons License: Eduardo Amorim on Flickr.com
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