Moral Implications of Dehumanizing Language

It’s hard to remember it, but the way we talk about things makes a difference in how we perceive them. For example, the increasing use of terms like “dog mom” has tended to shape our culture’s moral imagination such that owning a dog is increasingly understood as something akin to being an actual parent of a human child. That strange interpretation, then, is leading people to pay exorbitant veterinary fees for animals, take out insurance for their pets, and even use internet fundraising sites to pay for expensive surgeries for animals. Action follows language.

Sometimes the requests are so outlandish that I have to wonder how we got to this stage in our culture. Caring humanely for our pets is one thing. Risking bankruptcy (which I’ve seen peers do) for the sake of Fluffy is another. And it’s the “my pet is a member of the family” or “my pet is my child” language that has created a conceptual framework where such ideas can become normal. This language has moral implications.

The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.

Language and Cruelty

Smith’s thesis is that the language that we use to describe people shapes the way we view them. Thus calling people “dogs” or “cockroaches” is a way of dehumanizing them, which, in turn, can be the basis for not caring for them or even seeking to end their existence. He argues that dehumanization is “the act of conceiving of people as subhuman creatures rather than as human beings” (26).

Historical evidence seems to bear Smith’s thesis out. For example, race-based chattel slavery, of those with darker skin was often justified on the basis of the assumed subhumanity of those ethnicities. The means of domination of other cultures—guns, medicine, and other basic technologies—also became the justification for domination. Other cultures weren’t as advanced technologically, so they must be less human.

Significantly in the bloody 20th century we see dehumanization being wielded in extraordinary ways. For example, the attempt by the Germans to exterminate European Jews required viewing them as less than human. Smith recounts the numerous ways that propaganda portrayed Jews as a disease on society, vermin, or a pestilence. That language shaped culture so that herding millions of humans into a gas chamber and burning their remains in an oven was morally conceivable. As Milton Mayer recounts in They Thought They Were Free, many of the cruelties were known. They were simply deemed acceptable. In our supposedly more civilized time, the potential dangers of dehumanization are only becoming for concerning because we no longer have a way to escape the digital identities we have acquired.

As we think about the language we read and the language we use, Smith’s book raises profound questions about the way we describe others. Describing other Americans as “deplorables” is an example of dehumanization that justifies violence and exclusion from society. Describing refugees and illegal aliens as diseases, parasites, or an infestation is similarly morally dangerous. How we vote and shape policies is one thing. Whether we describe those outside our circle as subhuman is another. Smith’s warning is worth considering.

Distinctness of Humans

On a cultural level the premise of the book is intriguing. Livingstone is not working from a Christian framework, though the Judeo-Christian worldview indelibly colors his outlook. Judging a culture for dehumanization begs the question why humanization is normal; that idea would have have been complete foreign in most ancient cultures.

When we read ancient histories there is no overt concern for individuals or even the survival of other people. In fact, the opposite is true. It was perfectly acceptable—perhaps preferred—to destroy people and cultures with impunity. What we might now call genocide or ethnic cleansing was normative in ancient cultures. The saving grace for humanity was that the technologies available to enact the genocide were rudimentary. It was easier to escape and harder to perform mass killings before the prevalence of modern technologies.

But the actual concern for a human or a group of humans as morally significant stems from the idea the humans are made in the image of God, which is a distinctly Judeo-Christian ideal drawn from Genesis. As Tom Holland has argued in Dominion, human rights and other similar ideals never would have become prevalent in the world without the rise of Christianity around the globe.

So, from one angle, Smith’s book is interesting simply because it reflects someone without apparent Christian grounding judging the world through a distinctly Judeo-Christian lens. He wonders how humans can dehumanize so that extreme cruelty is possible. The opposite question is even more intriguing to me: Why would we suppose that humans would rise above animal cruelty?

Smith wrestles with this somewhat in his book, largely discarding a Holland-esque understanding as he moves toward his consideration of the dehumanization question. While Smith’s concerns about dehumanization are warranted and well-founded, he fails to offer meaningful prescriptions beyond a general “stop using dehumanizing language.” In truth, the solution is to pursue the use of appropriate, humanizing language, which sees the image of God in all humans. This is a feature of the Judeo-Christian worldview in general, with Christianity being the most complete expression. The gospel, therefore, is the solution to dehumanization.

Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others

By Smith, David Livingstone

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