A Word for American Health
Welfare • noun • (well-fair)
Definition: the health, happiness, and well-being of a person or group; an example of America’s inverted English
Origin: English
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My book THE CRIME WITHOUT A NAME was released on October 12, 2021 and NPR has picked it as one of the top books of the year!
You can order the book—including the audiobook—and watch recordings of my book tour discussions at Eaton and the New York Public Library at thecrimewithoutaname.com.
Earlier this month, I read an article in the New Yorker about the dystopian novel We written by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin.
Zamyatin wrote the novel around 1921, but Soviet censors prevented its publication in his homeland. Zamyatin’s book did not see the light of day until 1924 when it was translated into English and published in the United Kingdom. The popularity of We in western Europe enraged Joseph Stalin, and Zamyatin was blacklisted in the Soviet Union and eventually exiled from the country. In 1937, Zamyatin died in Paris and We would not get published in the Soviet Union until 1954.
Two of We’s central themes are the soul-crushing status quo of a state-controlled authoritarian society and the society’s inverted language. For example, the novel’s authoritarian tyrant is called the Benefactor (We’s inverted language inspired George Orwell’s doublethink and newspeak in 1984).
In the novel, the soul-crushing norm exists to destroy individuality and create a soulless mass of people devoid of indivuiduality, or a “we.” Within the inverted language of We, “we” has also become singular because the authoritarian state has crushed everyone’s soul and molded them into a soulless mass. The novel’s tension arises once the main character has been diagnosed by the state as having developed a soul. D-503’s (in We, everyone’s name is a letter plus a series of numbers, akin to a prison number) soul is considered a problem that needs to be destroyed so that he can be reintegrated into society. In We, soullessness equals happiness and a soul creates chaos.
As We theorizes, a soulless way of life will create an inverted language because as human life is rendered meaningless, the meaning of our words will also disappear. Soulless people speak soulless words and as their lives lose meaning, so do their words.
America’s ethnocidal status quo is not as dystopian as We, but ethnocide’s dependence on perpetual division and Geistmord means that our language frequently becomes inverted once Americans aspire to dismantle ethnocide and cultivate an inclusive, equitable, and sustainable society.
The meaning of the word “welfare” in the United States is a prime example of America’s inverted language.
Welfare and Inverted Language
Prior to the 1960s, welfare or government assistance programs in the United States were rarely considered controversial topics, yet the lack of controversy also coincided with the normalization of American apartheid.
During Jim Crow, the United States intentionally worked to deny people of color social services and government assistance, and prior to Jim Crow during the era of Redemption, white Americans actively worked to pass laws to deprive Black Americans of the rights they won during Reconstruction after the Civil War. And before the Civil War, the United States condoned slavery. America has rarely aspired to cultivate a “we” that extended beyond white Americans.
Yet around the 1960s, as social services were being expanded to people of color due to the success of the Civil Rights movement, welfare soon became a pejorative in America. Once America’s “we” included non-white Americans, ethnocidal Americans felt empowered to redefine words and invert language in order to demonize and denounce the humanization of people of color. The recognition of a soul within communities of color equated to a problem some segments of America wanted to solve. A soulless discourse became a vital part of their dystopian agenda.
For example, the term “welfare queen” soon became part of our national discourse to describe people of color who had allegedly defrauded the American government by making false welfare claims. Black Americans needing social assistance or welfare had now become synonymous with being illegitimate and fraudulent. By the 1970s, the narrative of Black Americans using welfare to defraud the government had become a regular Republican talking point and a key aspect of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1976.
Additionally, people of color who were recipients of welfare benefits were often described as lazy and undeserving of government assistance, and people of color became stigmatized for receiving welfare. Welfare now meant “lazy,” instead of “health” and “well-being.”
Eventually, the corrupted narratives of Black fraud and laziness would merge and Americans across the political divide started believing that welfare had now become a tool for people of color to use to fraudulently take money from the government instead of getting a job. Millions of Americans believed that “lazy” minorities were defrauding the government so that they could live entirely off of welfare benefits at the expense of “hard-working, tax-paying” white Americans.
By the 1980s, welfare reform had become a significant part of the Republican Party’s political agenda. In the 1990s, Democrat Bill Clinton campaigned on a platform to “end welfare as we know it,” and as president in 1996, he implemented national welfare reform. Despite being signed into law by a Democrat, welfare reform was considered a victory for the Republican Party and a cornerstone of their “Contract with America.” The Republican Party’s dystopian agenda to invert language in order to deny people of color of much needed government services had become so mainstream that even the Democrats, the party who implemented these programs, believed that they needed to be “reformed,” which was code for reduced or taken away.
In a matter of decades, the definition of welfare as a concern about a person’s or a people’s health and well-being had been usurped by a white, ethnocidal, Republican connotation that existed solely to dehumanize people of color.
America’s language became inverted in response to recognizing the soul and humanity of people of color, and America’s ethnocidal status quo inverted our language in order to sustain a soulless norm. America’s norm of Geistmord still influences our society today, and many of the Republican and Democrat objections to President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better legislation derive from the American myth that poor people and minorities will abuse government services and depend on welfare instead of obtaining employment.
A dystopian narrative built upon an agenda designed to sustain the inequality of Jim Crow and America’s centuries-long apartheid still influences our politics today.
A Society Without Health, Well-Being, and Welfare
As we all start a new year, it is natural to think about what we are grateful for and, after living through two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve grown to appreciate my health and well-being more than ever.
Additionally, COVID-19 has also demonstrated that it is much harder to be healthy when the people around you are being irresponsible and unhealthy. My personal health is connected to the health of those around me. It is connected to people who I will never meet, yet my health and their health are dependent upon all of us caring about each other’s health in addition to our own.
Our welfare is dependent upon the cultural “we” that is supposed to exist in a healthy, sustainable, Eǔtopian society. Yet unfortunately, America’s ethnocidal society thrives on sustained division and the exploitation of the other. Therefore, when Americans attempt to cultivate a healthy and equitable “we,” our society turns “welfare” into a negative word.
Welfare is just one example, but our ethnocidal society continues to demonize and shun language that celebrates equality and diversity and empathizing with one another.
Many Americans would actually shun healthcare that they need if it means that people they consider to be the other who they have long demonized would also receive healthcare. Many white Americans shunned the Affordable Care Act because they believed that they could not trust President Barack Obama, and they yearned for Donald Trump to provide them with healthcare instead.
America’s ethnocidal society has always embraced ethnocidal language that makes all of us sick, anxious, and in a state of dis-ease; yet as we start a new year, we should empower ourselves to both speak enriching and nurturing words, and fight against the inevitable attempts to corrupt and invert our language as we embrace equality and the cultivation of an authentic American “we.”
