What's Wrong With the W-word?

Let’s face it — words have power; especially when used to identify a group of people in a negative way. As an African American woman, I used to cringe whenever I heard the "N-word", no matter the skin color of the person who used it.

But in the US, one word has even more insidious power when describing a group of people than any other; and its power seems to lie in the fact that it’s used to describe a group of people in a positive way. It’s the W-word: White.

More than 20 years ago, I started using the term “European American” instead of the W-word. I used it infrequently at first, but as I grew older, the term became part of my everyday vocabulary.

There are several reasons why I prefer the term. First, it’s an equalizer. The identity of every other ethnic group in the US has evolved into a dual-phrase expression, indicating the individual’s family heritage and, with or without the hyphen, where they are now. I believe those of European heritage should be identified in the same way. Such a designation also places all people from Europe into one category regardless of their exact country of origin, equal to the pooling of the other ethnic communities into one category regardless of the various countries from which they or their ancestors originated.

The term European American also removes the connotations of the adjective ‘white’ as equivalent to ‘superior’. Look up the definition in any dictionary and you’ll find ‘white’ means everything from ‘pure’, ‘the color of snow’, ‘innocent' and ‘unmarked’. These connotations intensify the sense of power and privilege held by many European Americans.

Next, European American is more accurate. In physics, white is defined as ‘the absence of hue’. European Americans don't lack hue; they have less melanin in their skin because their ancestors migrated north from Africa (the birthplace of the human race) to Europe where the rays of the sun are less intense.

Finally, it’s humanizing. It defines an individual as a person instead of a color.

I don’t expect European Americans to give up using the term ‘white’ any time soon; for too many, it would mean giving up their sense of power, which would, therefore, make them equal to everyone else. But since I’ve started using European American, the W-word has less power over me.

- D. M. Cross