The Language of Poverty
I have been collecting words. Not because I enjoy philology (though I do), but because the words a society uses for its poor reveal more about the society than about the poor.
Consider the vocabulary:
“Underprivileged.” Literally: lacking privilege. The word locates the problem in the person’s absence of something, as if privilege were a natural condition and its lack were an anomaly. It does not name the system that distributes privilege unequally. It names the person who did not receive enough of it.