Years ago, I came to the realization that calling my client “the defendant” rather than by his name fed into his dehumanization. He wasn’t a person, but a defendant. Similarly, I never called the prosecution “the People,” as was stylized in the caption in New York state courts. They were “the government,” or perhaps “the district attorney” or “the prosecution,” because the jury was “the people.” I have no clue whether it actually changed anything, but I believed it to be the right thing to do, so I did it.
Since then, it’s spiraled out to others, to everyone, under the name “person-first” language. Except it wasn’t what I sought to do, replace a characterization with a name, but replace a description with a longer description that started with the word “person” and ended with whatever the point of the phraseology would be. Someone wasn’t homeless, but a person experiencing homelessness, and thereafter houselessness which became the new homelessness as if people were confused by the former. Continue reading →