The New York Times
The words entering and leaving the Biden administration
WASHINGTON – Days after President Joe Biden took office, the Bureau of Land Management placed the scenic landscape of a winding river at the top of its website, which during the previous administration displayed a photograph of a huge coal wall. In the Department of Homeland Security, the phrase “illegal alien” is being replaced by “non-citizen”. The Department of the Interior now makes sure that the mentions of its stakeholders include “tribal” people (with a capital “T”, according to the preference of Native Americans). The two most unpopular words in Trump’s lexicon – “climate change” – are once again appearing on government websites and documents; Environmental Protection Agency officials have even started using the hashtag #climatecrisis on Twitter. And across the government, LGBTQ references are popping up everywhere. Visitors to the White House website are now asked whether they wish to provide their pronouns when filling out a contact form: she / he, he / he or they. Subscribe to the New York Times newsletter The Morning. All of this is part of a concerted effort by the Biden government to reshape the government after four years of former President Donald Trump, in part by eliminating the language and images that represented his anti-immigration, anti-scientific and anti-homosexual position and replacing – by words and images that are more inclusive and that best correspond to the sensibilities of the current President. “Biden is trying to recover the vision of America that existed during the Obama administration, a vision that was much more diverse, much more tolerant of religion, much more tolerant of different types of dispositions and gender presentations,” said Norma Mendoza-Denton, professor of anthropology at UCLA and author of “Language in the Trump Era: Scandals and Emergencies”. Mendoza-Denton said Trump sought to “remake reality through language” during a tumultuous term. In her book, which she co-wrote with Janet McIntosh of Brandeis University, McIntosh wrote that the former president “changed some of the deepest expectations about presidential language, not only with respect to style, but also the relationship between words it’s reality. ”Now, Biden government officials are using Trump’s own tactics to adjust reality again, this time erasing the words his predecessor used and returning explicitly to those that had been banned. “The president was clear to all of us: words are important, tone is important and civility is important,” said Jen Psaki, press secretary for the White House. “And bringing the country together, resuming our seat at the global table means turning the page on actions, but also the divisive and often xenophobic language of the last government.” Some change in the language used by government agencies is not uncommon when a new government arrives in Washington. In addition to their symbolic power, revisions can help usher in new policies. Allowing the phrase “climate change” gives government scientists the green light, while banning the use of “illegal aliens” can alter real-life commitments between immigrants and border agents. But rarely has the contrast been as strong as between Biden and Trump. Rhetorical revision is underway in all corners of the government, as executive decrees are drafted, press releases are modified, dozens of federal forms are adjusted and online portals are redesigned. Stephen Miller, who sought similar changes early in the Trump administration as chief policy advisor, said the adoption of what he called politically correct language by Biden government officials reflected the importance of framing important issues for the public. In addition to the changes to the sites, he noted that Biden’s executive orders were filled with words and phrases that would never have left Trump’s mouth, including “equity”, “environmental justice”, “path to citizenship”, “pro-choice” “And” undocumented immigrant. “” The struggle for lexicon is actually the central struggle, “said Miller, who wrote many of Trump’s speeches and was the architect of his attack on the immigration system.” The goal of equity is to lead to this idea that America is a nation that believes that everyone has this fundamental dignity of treatment. But the other side would say, ‘What you call equity, I call discrimination’. ”Trump administration officials, like Miller, sought to engender similar language changes while in office. Miller fought in 2017 to use the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism” during that year’s presidential speech in Congress, arguing that it conveyed the seriousness of Trump’s purpose in fighting t errorism. Critics said the use of the phrase falsely suggested that all Muslims are terrorists. And Ben Carson, Trump’s secretary of housing and urban development, proposed removing the phrase “inclusive and sustainable communities, free from discrimination” from the department’s mission statement. Later, he stepped back. For the Biden government, the change in vocabulary was immediate. Hours after taking office, officials responsible for updating WhiteHouse.gov removed pages highlighting the 1776 Trump Commission, which compared progressism to fascism and attacked liberals who claim the United States foundation was tainted by slavery . At the same time, the president’s advisers restored the Spanish version of the site, which had been taken down by Trump’s digital team, and hired sign language interpreters for the live broadcast of the press secretary’s daily briefing. References to presidents like “he” have been changed to “them” in parts of the site. At the State Department, incoming secretary Antony Blinken acted quickly to erase what Mike Pompeo, his predecessor, called a “ethos” statement for US diplomats, which included a promise to be a “champion of American diplomacy” and working with “unfailing professionalism”. Many longtime members of the department saw this as an insulting warning to the so-called deep state that Pompeo and Trump believed to be undermining their agenda. Instead, Blinken issued a statement that said “the spirit of public service permeates the workforce” and stated that State Department employees “do not need a reminder of the values we share”. And Bureau of Land Management officials, in addition to refurbishing their website, restored the cliché language at the bottom of all documents, including the statement that the agency’s mission is “to sustain the health, diversity and productivity of public lands. of America”. Melissa Schwartz, the chief communications officer for the Interior Department, said these changes are part of a new policy to encourage voices that were not heard during the Trump administration. “The words we choose are critical and set the tone, whether communicated to the press, social media or messages to all employees,” she said. “In the interior, this means not only recognizing the disproportionate impact that the climate crisis is having on communities of color and indigenous peoples, but also embracing science and the solutions that will help us face it.” Biden government officials say the effort to modify the language used by government officials recognizes the powerful messages that certain words and phrases send. The term “foreigner” is inscribed in immigration statutes and has been used extensively in the government for decades to describe foreigners, including appearing in memos from Obama-era officials. But it has increasingly been at the center of an ideological tug of war over whether immigrants are unjustly stigmatized and whether those in the United States without authorization should be called “undocumented” rather than “illegal”. Three years ago, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered his department officials to use the term “illegal alien” in all communications when describing someone who did not come to the United States legally. In a memo, Justice Department officials wrote that “the word ‘undocumented’ is not based on U.S. code and should not be used to describe someone’s illegal presence in the country.” Now, the Biden government is explicitly reversing that position. On February 12, officials from Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that deals with citizenship, said that employees should not use the word “foreigner” in “outreach efforts, internal documents and in general communication with stakeholders, partners and the general public. ” The change, said the agency’s interim director, “aligns our language practices with government guidelines on the use of immigration terminology by the federal government.” A few days later, the White House went further. In his legislative proposal for a far-reaching immigration review, Biden would remove the word “foreigner” from the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and replace it with “non-citizen”, a suggestion that infuriates anti-immigration groups. “It’s kind of Orwellian – that’s what it really is,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates immigration limits. “The war against the word ‘foreigner’ is a continuation of that effort to destigmatize illegal immigration that started in the mid-1970s. In a sense, this is the culmination of that process. ”Some changes are still pending. The website of the Department of Homeland Security’s citizenship office, USCIS.gov, still features the mission statement that Trump administration officials modified in 2018 to remove “America’s promise as a nation of immigrants” and replace it with ” judge applications for immigration benefits reasonably. “That could change course soon. At the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump’s advisers removed the part of the site dedicated to climate change. In mid-February, the site had not yet But given Biden’s approach to the issue, officials said they expected it to happen soon, but the Treasury Department is already moving ahead with plans to put Harriet Tubman on the $ 20 bill, a decision that has been postponed. during the Trump administration, and at the Department of the Interior, employees were told that they can use phrases like “science-based evidence” again. At the agency’s public meetings on January 21, Schwartz had a message for his colleagues. “Climate change is real, science is back and you should feel free to talk about both in your press releases,” she said. “I set you free!” This article was originally published in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company