Are You Researching the Effects of the Trump Administration’s State-Sponsored Racism? Please Call It By Its Name!
By José M. Causadias
This piece is a part of our Spark series Growing Up Amid the Rise of Racism
Health crises are major challenges to scientists, given that is their duty to understand and alleviate their impact on people’s development and wellbeing. Health crises are complex social and medical emergencies marked by increased morbidity and mortality rates for a particular population in a specific location and time. This is the case of health crises in the United States related to firearms, climate change, and the Trump administration.
Using euphemisms in scientific research of health crises harms efforts to find solutions and denies the public much needed knowledge. Euphemisms are bland expressions used to mask and avoid employing other words that may be considered offensive or unpleasant. Consider the role of euphemisms with the ongoing health crises around firearm deaths. Recent evidence shows that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relied on euphemisms to refer to the role of access to firearms in suicides that “effectively downplay and obscure the risk posed by firearms.” This decision follows the Dickey Amendment, a provision inserted in the 1996 federal spending bill that forbids the CDC from spending any funding in advocating or promoting gun control. As a result, the words “gun” and “firearms” are often missing from factsheets and information on suicide prevention from the CDC, using instead euphemisms like “lethal means” and “lethal methods.” This is a disservice to the public because it fails to convey the role of guns in this health crisis.
In another example of employing euphemisms, recent reports indicate that employees at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) were instructed by officials of the Trump administration to avoid using the term “climate change” in their work, and to replace them with the euphemism “weather extremes.” Some USDA staff resisted and argued: “‘we would prefer to keep the language as is’ and stressing the need to maintain the “‘scientific integrity of the work’”. As scientists, we should follow their example.
“The Current Political Climate”
Perhaps the most concerning example of this Orwellian trend of using euphemisms in dealing with health crises is the growing practice of employing terms like “the current political climate” in published research studies looking at the effects of the rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration on the health of children, adolescents, and families in the United States. Other expressions better articulate the problem such as “immigration policy changes” and “anti-immigration rhetoric,” but they often fail to connect these changes and rhetoric to its source: the Trump administration. We should not avoid details, especially when it comes to the factors that affect the health of children, adolescents, and families.
Euphemisms, Science, and Specificity
The avoidance by scientists of naming this administration may be motivated by several reasons including fear of retaliation from the government or its supporters, or expectations of backlash from federal funding agencies. Another potential reason for relying on euphemisms is that scientists are being overly cautious about making causal claims, or even that they are confusing scientific objectivity with moral ambiguity. In addition, scientists working at different institutions have different privileges and responsibilities. For instance, scientists working in federal agencies face a dilemma: they risk their jobs by not complying with language mandated by political appointees, and they also risk losing their credibility as scientists if they use euphemisms. Tenured professors in universities have far more academic freedom, so they should exercise this privilege by using precise language.
Regardless of a scientist’s position, the use of euphemisms is an abdication of the social responsibility of scientists to be clear, honest, and direct in their research in service of the public. Medical practitioners have long been encouraged to communicate clearly with patients about their health. As scientists, we should do the same in our research. For these reasons, I encourage my colleagues to clearly state “Trump administration” in the title, abstract, and/or keywords of their studies on the health effects of its policies and rhetoric on children, adolescents, and families. It is significant, but insufficient, to mention this administration in the text of the study because it denies visibility to the source of the problem. I am not advocating for only using this term, but to use it in addition to other terms when it is clearly the topic of their studies.
Counterarguments
Skeptics would likely argue that correlation is not causation; that just because something happens under the Trump administration does not make it the driving factor for a health outcome. However, evidence suggests this is not the case: the president’s political ideology drives racial disparities in health. Donald J. Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 by calling immigrants from Mexico rapists and drug dealers, and once elected as President has continued to employ such racist rhetoric that even the House of Representatives of the United States Congress condemned it in House Resolution 489 from 2019. The Trump administration’s state-sponsored racism includes several policy changes such as a ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, and enforcing family separations and indefinite detention of refugees fleeing violence in Central America, to name a few.
Naming “firearms” in research examining their role in suicides is not a manifestation of political partisanship. Writing “climate change” in studies on rising sea levels is not a misapplication of the scientific method. Likewise, stating “Trump administration” in the title, abstract, and/or keywords of research on the health effects of its racist policies and rhetoric on children, adolescents, and families is not an expression of ideological bias. It is practicing precision in science by employing the correct terms to identify the mechanisms responsible for these health problems. It would also be correct to identify the “Obama administration” on the title, abstract, and/or keywords of research on the health correlates of the massive deportation efforts it undertook.
But it is a false equivalence to assume these two administrations are very similar. The Trump administration is exceptional in its explicit animus towards racial/ethnic minorities and immigrants, its devotion to enact policies that marginalize them, and its determination to assert the dominance of White Americans. The rhetoric and policies emanating from the Trump administration have caused considerable damage to children, adolescents, and their families in the United States, citizens and non-citizens alike. Fueled by the rhetoric and policies of this administration, there has been an increase in nation-wide hate crimes against other minority groups, not only Latinos. Anti-Semitic incidents grew nearly 60% in 2017 and White supremacist terrorism is responsible for the is a rise in domestic terror arrests in the United States, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These trends are so concerning that my colleague and I have argued that racial discrimination in the United States is a national health crisis that demands a national health solution. This starts by calling the Trump administration by its name. Using clear language is an exercise of accountability by scientists.
It places the burden on them to provide evidence of the role of these mechanisms in health outcomes. Further, it compels researchers to be explicit about their theory of causation, rather than relying on the ambiguity of describing relationships with correlations. Rejecting euphemisms and using clear language is a marker of good science because it imposes constraints on the generality of findings in relation to the sample of a study. That is, they link adverse health outcomes among specific research participants in response to the rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration, and not any other administration.
Employing euphemisms to insinuate harmful health effects of the rhetoric and policies of the Trump administration, but failing to say so explicitly, also hinders the accumulation of knowledge. Using euphemisms makes it more difficult for scientists to draw conclusions about the growing number of studies that make these connections and try to test the replicability of findings. For instance, high quality research synthesis relies on clear language in titles, abstract, and/or keywords to identify, review, and summarize large bodies of research. Naming the Trump administration in title, abstract, and/or keywords facilitates research synthesis and our understanding of its effects.
Please call it by its name!
But perhaps the most damaging repercussion of using euphemisms is that they make it more difficult to find solutions to health crises. Euphemisms like “the current political climate,” “immigration policy changes,” and “anti-immigration rhetoric” keep the public uninformed about the grave health consequences of the actions of the Trump administration. Who created the “current political climate”? Who is responsible for these “immigration policy changes”? What is the source of “anti-immigration rhetoric”? The Trump administration is. It is our duty to share this with the public without sugar-coating it. This knowledge can help them recognize this as a problem and empower them to be part of the solution. The words of James Baldwin remain true: “not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” For these reasons, I ask my colleagues who use their research to challenge the Trump administration’s state-sponsored racism: please call it by its name!
José M. Causadias is an assistant professor at the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. He received a PhD in Child Psychology from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota in 2014. His work focuses on promoting innovation in theory and methods that can advance our understanding of the role of culture on development. He conducts meta-research on culture by identifying biases in the way psychologists study culture (Causadias, Vitriol, & Atkin, 2018), and conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses on studies on culture (Causadias, Korous, & Cahill, 2018).
