From a story in The Christian Science Monitor, here’s the take of lexicographer Anne Soukhanov on the term “minority” — currently a hotly debated signifier in Boston, where this summer Boston City Council president Charles Yancey introduced an ordinance to strike the word from the official city lexicon:

Where the term lingers despite all demographic evidence to the contrary, says lexicographer Anne Soukhanov, it’s not just out of laziness, but because ‘some gray-suited white men in a fancy office think they’re better than other people.’

Ms. Soukhanov, herself Caucasian, has spent a lifetime thinking about words. She and other editors of the Encarta World Dictionary were particularly careful in their definition of the word ‘minority’ in the book’s most recent edition. Definition 4 reads: ‘OFFENSIVE TERM; an offensive term for a minority member, now avoided by careful speakers because it can cause offense (offensive).’

Her dictionary was criticized by some for trying too hard to be politically correct. But Soukhanov says it had to be: ‘We’re supposed to reflect the trends that are going on in society today, not the trends that were established by the Brothers Grimm.’

As I was removing all things Encarta from my computer’s hard drive, all I could think was this: hopefully my own small act of protest will “reflect the trends that are going on in society today, not the trends” that are increasingly (and troublingly) being established by thought police and lexicographic meddlers like Ms. Soukhanov. While pompously and sanctimoniously championing the cleansing of our language, Soukhanov and her ilk (ironically) give these terms whatever rancid power they have have by elevating them to the stature of hate speech. To stanch a connotation, Souhanov and Yancey would have us kill a word.

My advice to Ms. Soukhanov and to Mr. Yancey: read John McWhorter’s piece in The New Republic on book Randall Kennedy’s new book Nigger. Maybe McWhorter and Kennedy can teach you how the words/power dynamic really works…