Euphemisms All the Way Down view post on FAIR.org by Sam Husseini The report (5/30/19) was by Ally Schweitzer, “WAMU’s business and development reporter.” A recent segment on WAMU, one of the NPR affiliates in Washington, DC, focused on efforts to change the name of the largely African-American neighborhoods “East of the River” to “East End.” The station reported: Residents insist the name change only encourages gentrification, and the term “East of the River” must stay put. “My question is: Who are we trying to change that connotation for? And my sense is — the developers,” Jo Knight, a resident of historic Anacostia, said at a recent community meeting about the area’s rebranding. While Knight is doubtlessly correct about who would benefit from the euphemism, it’s worth noting that this short paragraph contains at least one other major euphemism: “developer.” It’s an incredibly positive term that has burrowed so deeply into our language that we rarely think to question it. In practice, “development” often means the destruction of historic architecture, the disruption of neighborhood interconnections and, of course, the driving out of existing residents—often low-income people, people of color or immigrants. None other than Frank Lloyd Wright derided the influence of “advertising men; the realtor, the so-called ‘developer’—all defacing life,” in his 1957 book-length essay A Testament . But scare quotes around “developer” have long ceased, with even their most ardent critics accepting that flattering term. Our language has become so distorted, it’s hard to keep track. Part of the issue is that there’s no obvious replacement for the term. Perhaps, taking a cue from Wright, we could adopt the dysphemism “defacer.” This notion was a regular refrain from Wright, who continually called for an architecture “that belonged where you see it standing—and was a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace.” And it is, after all, “developers” who are likely responsible for defacing, or at least distorting, our language, such that euphemisms like “rebirth” and “revitalization” have become euphemisms for gentrification. I should hasten to add that Barbara Schiffler charged in a letter to the Los Angeles Times(12/1/15) that “‘gentrification’ is a euphemism for market cruelty.” Indeed, it just might be euphemisms all the way down. This is all part of a process Neil deMause (FAIR.org, 2/19/16) has called “developer-speak,” in which “rebirth or revitalization or renaissance is what happens to neighborhoods when you build new stuff.” Ironically, the word “developer” is itself one of the greatest triumphs of “developer-speak.” Then there’s WAMU‘s use of the word “rebranding” here. In this context, it’s something of a euphemism as well. The “East End” proposal isn’t like a radio station, like WAMU, switching from promoting itself as “88.5—listen when you drive” to “88.5—now with less baloney and jive,” or some such. Instead, the new neighborhood name is part of a process that will, as residents charge, help drive them from the community. Mike Wallace interviewing Frank Lloyd Wright (9/1/57) WAMU promotes itself as “Washington’s public radio station,” which is quite dubious, given its long list of corporate sponsors and board members, some of which are involved in defacing. As Wright told Mike Wallace in 1957: Our natures are now so warped in many directions, we are so conditioned by education, we have no longer any straight, true, clean reactions that we can trust, and we have to be pretty wise and careful what it is we give up to, what it is we admire, what it is we are inspired by. Not just our natures, but our language—and not just by education, but by media as well.

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