Weekend thinking: more on the Trump administration’s forbidden words

I’ve written previously about the list of words that automatically disqualify applicants for federal grants, but the New York Times has now published a more complete list of about 200 forbidden terms, along with examples of editing of federal websites.

These are perceived as “woke,” which the Trump administration especially opposes.

But many of these terms describe reality.

As a long time public health advocate, I take this quite personally.

Now, you can’t research or write about anything having to do with underrepresented minorities or inequality, but you also can’t do anything related to terms like these.

• activists
• advocates
• at risk
• barrier
• climate science
• confirmation bias
• female
• health disparity
• institutional
• mental health
• political
• privilege
• sociocultural
• systemic
• undervalued
• women

This is right out of George Orwell’s 1984.  It would be funny, if it weren’t having an effect.  I know of at least one instance of a federal scientist had to remove his name from a paper because it dealt with inequity—a topic very much on this list.

This kind of group-think deserves ridicule and firm pushback.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I intend to keep writing about these issues and flaunt the scarlet A—for Activist and Advocate. (along with a W for woman).