Six students – participants of the Human Rights Workshops for Students organized by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights – have decided to fight against verbal discrimination. They contrived a social campaign, the aim of which is to introduce changes in their surroundings. Currently, they are initiating the campaign ‘I feel good in Poland. Almost always’. (27-MAY-08)
Prepared by Agnieszka Chmielecka/ HRH Warsaw
Image from: www.lovespeech.info
‘Zazydzenie’ [Jewish infestation], ‘Polaczek’ [a Polack], ‘Murzyn’ [a Negro], ‘zoltek´ [a gook, a Chink, a Jap] – Words expressed without thinking, and these words hurt. It’s time to change this – say the young organizers of the campaign. The students emphasize that in Poland other people are often instinctively described using words that for them have a negative meaning. To some it may seem that the word ´Murzyn´ [a Nigger, a Negro] is indifferent, but the important thing is how it is perceived by Africans.
My own experience shows
Elwira Wasyk, one of the people in the group, worked in England during her summer vacations. ‘There the word ‘Pole’ has gained a negative meaning and sounds like ‘a Polack’. The English presume that a Pole lives with seven other people in one room, eats outdated food from a supermarket, fishes for carp in park ponds and yells in the street’ – she says. Elwira learned the hard way, how a person feels when he/she is addressed as ‘Pole’ in an ironic tone. – ‘Bad. It hurts. If it happens over and over again, you finally get tired of explaining that not all Poles eat swans from the park. Afterwards you stop admitting to being a Pole.’
Students assure that they are not after political correctness. They are trying to get through to us that they are talking about words, which really hurt others. – ‘We met people in Warsaw, who told us about their experiences: a Muslim woman, who was made to believe that all Islam followers are terrorists, a Belarusian, who was called ‘Russian, Russian,’ and our friend, whose father is Lebanese, is often nicknamed ‘Arab’. We want to create the habit of early tongue biting’ – they joke. They believe that Poles, as they themselves say, use stigmatizing words because of their lack of awareness rather than perfidiousness. In times of doubt, they advise us to ask e.g. an inhabitant of Africa, how he wants to be addressed and whether he is offended by the word ‘Murzyn’ [a Nigger, a Negro].
