Google Reviews, Language, and Formation

There are certain bywords that raise my alarm bells.

As a foster and adoptive parent an obvious one is "actual kids" used in context: "Are you going to have actual kids someday?" It can be confusing because I can assure you, these children are not mythical. They are indeed flesh and blood. We can feed them a piece of fish a la Luke 24:42 if one insists.

Another linguistic eyebrow raiser is "urban". While this is a word in the dictionary and has legitimate uses, sometimes it is used as a synonym for "Black" and I know enough Black folks from rural Georgia to know that's not alright.

One of the most common examples comes with the word "sketchy" as in "sketchy neighborhood" or "sketchy part of town". A good friend of mine likes to say, "There's no such thing as a good or bad neighborhood." And I think all of us know this inherently on some level. Every community, people group, church, and neighborhood is a collection of people who fall all over the moral spectrum.

A quick quiz will reveal this to us quite clearly. Think of the neighborhood you grew up in, whether it was good or bad and answer:

• Was there anyone who was notably rude?
• Was there anyone who was notably kind?
• Was there anyone who seemed nice, but later revealed themselves to be anything but?
• Was there anyone you once feared that revealed themselves to be delightful? (James Earl Jones in The Sandlot I'm looking at you!)

This topic was recently sparked for me by seeing a Google Review for a mural around the corner from our neighborhood.

This mural (which I've mentioned before) commemorates a neighborhood known as Sugar Hill that once stood on the spot. And while I'm not here to put anyone on blast*, I do think this negative way of communicating and thinking is common. It's worth engaging and countering. Here are four reasons to be cognizant of the way we speak about a place.

1. Reinforcing Poverty

In a study called "Voices of the Poor" the World Bank interviewed people experiencing material poverty all over the world: Albania and Appalachia to Vietnam and Zambia. This study found that while people did talk about a material lack of money or possessions, they more starkly spoke of the social and emotional costs of poverty. They spoke of being isolated, dehumanized, and mistreated. To be poor is to be treated as "less than". And this treatment had a real cost.

Language that labels has the active effect of increasing the experienced poverty of those living in it.

2. Inherent Dignity

"God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness'" - Genesis 1:26 

Every person you've met . . . you know what, C.S. Lewis makes this point better than I ever could in his essay The Weight of Glory: 

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

Human beings and the communities they form collectively are incredible and ordained with God's goodness. We ought honor and protect them.

3. The Footprint of History

We can come off foolish when we label a community without background knowledge. The Sugar Hill neighborhood is an example of this. If its history is examined, one will find that Sugar Hill was once a middle-upper class African American community. It was the home of Abraham Lincoln Lewis, the first Black millionaire in Florida. It was a vibrant neighborhood and connected to the arts and other historic Black neighborhoods nearby, but when Interstate 95 was being planned the chosen route ran directly over top of Sugar Hill. Much of the community was torn down and the interconnected Black neighborhoods on either side of the Hill were now disconnected and isolated from one another.

And none of this was accidental. The urban planning process never is. So, even if one wants to label it as a "bad neighborhood" a consideration of the context should disabuse our certainty in label placing.

4. Our Own Formation

To riff off of Lewis' last line above, the way we see others, the thought patterns we develop, the habits we fall into when considering one another's humanity has consequences. Historians will tell us about how this has played a role in wars and genocides. Horrors. And further, if we, as Lewis does, believe the part of God's image within us makes us immortal, then the moral arc that we are on will continue into eternity. Bitterness, superiority, and defamed thinking will progress steadily for centuries and millennia to their diabolical conclusions—unless interrupted by grace.

For our own sake, we need to be formed in the way of Jesus, in the pattern of love, and in care for those around us no matter what type of neighborhood they might live in.

To be a being imbued by the very image of our Creator, we can also direct his love, kindness, and grace out through our actions as we align with him in his work of redemption. Let us join his restoration project.

*I must admit I know I, too, am capable of misusing language or overlooking context. Just recently, someone questioned me on my use of the word "hood" when describing our neighborhood. I use it because it is a word that the community uses in a neutral, even positive way without negative connotation. But the person was right to ask me because when flippantly using that term around an experientially diverse audience, my attempt at sincerity might unintentionally bring disrepute on the community.