I would like to begin this blog article by inviting readers to look at this definition of the word “diplomat” https://www.dictionary.com/browse/diplomat – for it is well known that the diplomatic service is a popular profession among proven linguists such as myself. And why not? True mastery of a foreign language expected among those who do what I do (professional translation), fully requires active, humble and noble appreciation of another culture (in addition to your own – and not everyone meets that criterion), the particulars of which will depend on what other language you’re dealing with; and I think we can all see that no-one can be a diplomat if they lack in a quality like that (not that I personally have any particular intention of becoming one!). That said, while I am definitely going to be boldly political in this blog, covering things which would normally have no place in the business marketing of a professional translator, I will remain neutral, and I intend to refer parallels to what it means to do my job well; I do it to (once again) make a point as to why I am indeed a professional translator worth the name. With that, I invite you to read on. Note that I make no apologies for what follows, nor should I be expected to.

Now, it’s easy to be emotional about the death of George Floyd. A conspicuous sense of betrayal and distrust which provokes immense fear, grief, anger; and protests in response to it broke out all over the world (with, among other things, demands to defund the police; to say nothing of all the depressing violence and further deaths accompanying them). But even to a neutral observer – even if they were devoid of compassion – there’s no denying that it was done by a police officer of all people – someone responsible for enforcing the law and protecting people – who kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even after he repeatedly said “I can’t breathe”, and it was all very public (the police officer was even talking to people that he knew were recording him on Smartphones, from what I have read). It was a heinous crime, and he deserved to be charged with killing him unlawfully, but whether it was actually motivated primarily by racism is a question that is hardly ever considered, simply because of the emotional temperature shared by so many in connection with the matter.

With that statement made, it’s also pretty easy to be emotional about what the incident has led some people to do against their better judgement, even if most people would seemingly rather not admit it; for example, just look at the bonkers and irrelevant Coco Pops “racism” claim. Blatant cynical attention-seeking which neither proves nor achieves anything. Coco Pops were around long before George Floyd was murdered. Let’s not lose sight of the key facts – those good for assisting with agreement rather than disagreement. Let’s not dismiss the information that matters until it’s ignored to the point where it’s as good as forgotten… and before you know it, it actually is (!). That’s what happens when a neutral position about something is shunned in favour of asserting your own opinions about it aggressively in the hope that one day the masses will accept them as the “correct” and most “important” ones. Arrogant people are fond of this.

All this eager yet tiresome disquiet from people claiming to oppose racism is making society lose touch with what racism actually means. Real racism has ugly and sinister long-term consequences – not necessarily overt ones – whereas all the make-believe racism mantras we see today have encouraged so-called “oppressed” groups to be more and more eagerly plaintive in society as a whole only to expect less of themselves… which is exactly what they get. But people take from this the idea that it legitimises them jumping on the bandwagon, because appreciation of diversity and virtue-signalling always pays off, with reason to start considering that for some the ultimate cause is simply to make their voice heard and score points for themselves rather than to bring about a change in society in the name of justice, while they fully expect to be protected in the name of free speech. This leaves many afraid to challenge what they say, even in a country in which free speech is supposed to be the norm for everyone.

Talking of real racism: well, I’m white and I can agree, humbly, that it’s fair to believe that white-against-black racism has been the most common kind throughout human history. So I guess it’s grimly appropriate that assumptions are so common with regard to acts instantaneously labelled as white-against-black racism in particular. To be fair, in the past it really was, shamefully, accepted as normal for whites to make slaves of blacks, for no other reason than it was expected by and of the masses. Endorsed by the American government, no less! Sorry to American readers, but I’m only saying what’s true. Everyone knows that blacks were brought in from Africa and made to work in farms for whites against their will. And I have to accept that this would have occurred out of “a desire to embrace mass convenient opportunity” (a euphemism for greed, which is a sin in the Bible, of course) rather than any kind of xenophobia. By contrast, in the more “enlightened” modern day, saying that black men have big lips or that Chinese people have “funny” eyes out of hand may be crude and impudent, even demeaning, but the phrase “choosing to be offended” exists for a reason and such behaviour hardly passes for any kind of truly “wounding” rudeness or racially motivated intimidating or coercive behaviour… while others would have us believe otherwise. More than ever before, people are readily buying into the idea that someone of one race can “be racist” toward another someone of another race even if there is no manifest observable essentially oppressive / coercive behaviour with a racial overtone – in other words, “just because you don’t support the persecution of those of another race [usually a minority, at least in one’s own country] doesn’t mean you’re not a racist.”

But expressing dislike of another race on account of certain common aspects of their actual social behaviour which can legitimately be designated an assault on human dignity, simply doesn’t amount to encouraging victimisation against people of that race outside the boundaries of justice and fair treatment under the law. And yes, two wrongs don’t make a right, but we need to stop throwing together arguments merely dubbed “racist” or “anti-racist” simply to convince others that we take the topic with some nondescript kind of seriousness, and start to listen to the opinions of those we would not normally be inclined to befriend. When the former is done persistently, the core facts and justification arguments start to change, until the point where truth is distorted but it really does become acknowledged as the actual truth over time because people simply don’t expect it to be challenged.

I once read that calling someone “du” in German when you should call them “Sie” can amount to a racist attitude toward them depending on who they, and you, are – whether that’s true or not: so with racism and culture in general, so with translation and language in general. When translating there’s an art to picking out the substance of a message that goes beyond rendering just a technically justifiable equivalent of whatever words would end up used to express the original, and professional translators like me cannot afford to be without it.