Anti-Arab Bias in Dictionary Definitions
Though not much has happened on Wordwork|play for a few months, it has not been abandoned. It has merely been left to lie fallow for a while. I have continued to read, watch, think, and yes, cook, but I haven't done much writing. There is still more change afoot at my day job, and I'm moving to Hamilton at the end of June, but the change is now more measured and controlled. I think I'm almost ready to resume more regular writing here.
As for watching and thinking, my partner and I watched the 1997 biopic Wilde recently, a fascinating and ultimately frustrating biographical story in which two terms, used quite casually, got me thinking again about anti-Arab bias in dictionary definitions. On a few occasions, the dialogue contained the terms arab and street arab, terms with which neither of us were familiar, though negative connotations were clear.
A few days later, indeed within the same week, I came across this article from the Jordan Times about Merriam-Webster's decision to drop entries considered offensive to Arabs and Muslims. The terms at the center of the protest to Merriam-Webster, by Zarka University president Ishak Ahmad Farhan and the Professional Associations Council president Wael Saqqa, were anti-Semitism and arab. They would like to see the entries for these terms changed and/or dropped from the next edition.
While I would never suggest the dropping of entries from a dictionary or thesaurus, and indeed find it of the utmost importance that they be retained, I do believe that, as with other offensive and racist terms, the entries need to be clear about the fact that they are offensive and reference the context out of which they arose. Leaving them as they are serves not only to perpetuate negative racial stereotypes, but leads the reader to believe that these negative images are still held by the editors and publishers.
So I did some investigating. My 2003, 2nd Edition Oxford Dictionary of English does not list the lowercase arab on its own, but does list street Arab as "noun archaic a raggedly dressed homeless child wandering the streets." The online Webster Dictionary lists Arab as "n. 1. One of a swarthy race occupying Arabia, and numerous in Syria, Northern Africa, etc.," and as a subcategory, "Street Arab a homeless vagabond in the streets of a city, particularly and (sic) outcast boy or girl." YourDictionary has, as definition 5 under Arab, "a waif left to roam the streets; street Arab." It lists street Arab separately as well. In my cursory search, only the Free Dictionary mentioned, in its definition, that it was 'sometimes offensive'.
The definition of anti-Semitism is another example. Semite is defined, in the Oxford Dictionary, as "noun a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs." It is followed by an etymological reference to "Sem 'Shem', son of Noah in the Bible, from whom these people were traditionally supposed to be descended." Semitic is defined as "adjective 1 relating to or denoting a family of languages that includes Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic and certain ancient languages such as Phoenician and Akkadian, constituting the main subgroup of the Afro-Asiatic family. 2 relating to the peoples who speak these languages, especially Hebrew and Arabic."
The prefix anti-, as most of us know, stands for against, or opposed to. But put it in front of Semitic and it doesn't simply mean opposed to or against Semites. As pointed out in the aforementioned article, Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, defines anti-Semitism as: “opposition to Zionism: sympathy with opponents of the state of Israel.” What of the anti-Arab sentiment in which a great deal of the Western media and Hollywood blockbusters are soaked? Is this almost fashionable opposition to Arabs and Muslims, a people clearly defined as Semitic, not then anti-Semitism? It clearly is. But not according to our dictionaries.
I checked the definitions for a number of other offensive and racist terms -- Chink, gook, Jap, Kraut, nigger, and wop -- in my Oxford English dictionary and found all of them prefaced with 'informal, offensive' or some such acknowledgment. I think it's time the editors and publishers of modern English dictionaries did the same for terms offensive to Arabs. Leave the terms and definitions in the dictionaries, but at the very least be clear about the fact that they are offensive. And why not include a little historical context? Check arab and anti-Semitism at the Online Etymological Dictionary. There we find that the offensive definition of arab has to do with a settled people's bias against nomadic peoples. As for anti-Semitism, it is acknowledged that, though most commonly used to mean anti-Jewish, the term is not restricted to such use. It even suggests that "[t]hose who object to the inaccuracy of the term might try H. Adler's Judaeophobia (1882)." Why not use anti-Semitism as a general term for 'theories, actions, or policies' that are against Semites in general, and use more restrictive terms with reference to a specific Semitic people, i.e. Judaeophobia, Islamophobia, anti-Jewish, anti-Arab, anti-Assyrian, and so on?
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