The following interviews took place on a Saturday morning in Forsyth park in Savanah Georgia. Each participant was shown 5 sentences (shown below), and were asked to identify any words or phrases that they felt were offensive or harmful.
She was addicted to shopping, it was so insane.
I wanted to do a walk in meeting with the teacher but my roommate said that's lame.
I've always said my spirit animal is a lion because they are so brave.
Johnny said she is a retard, but I think she's just a normal person.
She is an American beauty guru, but has become a victim of cyberbullying.
After, I revealed to them the words that were labeled as offensive (underlined) by Standford’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (More information about this initiative is available in my podcast!)
Heres what they said:
Maggie & Kate - 30 years old, Gainesville Florida
Gary - From “all over”, retired minister
Herbit - 62 years old, New York City
Tony & Terry - St. Augustin Florida
“Theres definitely some that jump out very clearly that are not tolerated anymore, like retard and some that are more acceptable language that are still very ableist.”
“These are words that I have definitely started to steer completely away from”
“A lot of the time its just lazy, its easy, [you know], its what we’ve grown up with”
“I think there has to be some negative insinuation, implication, for it to be an actually negative thing”
“I certainly would not, for example, abandon using the word guru, because the fact that it came from a religious leader of another religion, doesn’t make it a negative word, in my mind, to use.
“I disagree because, I mean, I understand that you have to be sensitive to the way people speak and people express themselves, but ‘offense’ should be offensive.”
“ ‘she’ is describing a women so I dont understand how that could be described as offensive”
“I think a lot of its ridiculous”
“I don’t think it’s just a mere coincidence, I think that this is a, I don’t like the word conspiracy, but I mean theres an agenda out there by different groups of people, and there not necessarily pro-American.”
“I feel sorry for the kids growing up today with social media — it’s not social, it’s not liberal, it’s not media, I think it’s propaganda”