Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall received the deal of a lifetime when Scholastic, the publisher for books aimed at younger audiences, offered her a contract. Under this deal, her book “Love In The Library” would be distributed to schools nationwide, but with one condition: she had to edit the word ‘racism’ from her introduction.
It was the most personal story that Maggie Tokuda-Hall had ever written: the tale of how her grandparents met and fell in love at an incarceration camp in Idaho that held Japanese Americans during World War II.
Alexandra Alter, The New York Times
Words possess the power of the emotions behind them. In today’s world, consumers often perceive companies as representing ideologies, though they primarily cater to the interests of their financial stakeholders. Companies use statistical analysis to calculate their return on investment, manipulating these very emotions.
Ideally, we should not fear words themselves. Instead, we should consider the poor editing or euphemisms that restrict their meaning and the broader history they express. That history creates conversations and discourse crucial to our evolution.