Word of the year is not so positive

Babbling Brooks Column
By: 
Kim Brooks
Express Editor

     I love the end of the year. Let me explain…

     News agencies release their lists of top national and international news stories of the year. Social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) release their lists of top trends of the year. Entertainment magazines offer top celebrity news of the year. And, finally, the word of the year is released. (Can you tell I’m a writer?)

     Drum roll please…

     The word of the year for 2016 is… “Xenophobia.”

     What does that even mean?

     Well, xenophobia means fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers.” Another definition states “fear or dislike of customs, dress, and cultures of people with backgrounds different from our own.”

     The website dictionary.com points out that “xenophobia” is fitting for 2016, accurately summing up the feelings during and after the election.

     There were several instances in which the website’s data showed spikes in searches for the word “xenophobia:” April 2015, after terrorist attacks in South Africa; late June 2016, the days after the United Kingdom’s Brexit vote; and early May 2016, after President Obama used the word during a campaign speech against Donald Trump.

     Robert Reich, a former public policy professor at the University of California, said the fact that xenophobia is the word of the year is nothing to be proud of. “It’s a word not to be celebrated, but to be deeply concerned about,” he said.

     Both sides of the political aisle have not helped in this separation of our country, nor when it comes to healing our nation. This anger toward people who are different is not what this country was founded on.

     The United States is known as a melting pot of religions, ethnicities, race, gender association, beliefs and more. We need to embrace those differences rather than try to separate from them.

     There was, and continues to be, so much strife against “others.” Pretty sad we can’t come together rather than tear one another apart.

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