The Stories We Tell—and the Words We Choose

For as long as I can remember—and certainly for many years—I have noticed something in the way we tell stories.

It is a subtle thing, so subtle that I suspect most people never notice it. In fact, I doubt many who use these words intend anything harmful. The habit has become so deeply woven into our everyday speech that it has become part of the grammar of storytelling.

Yet I also have little doubt that, for some, these same words are rooted in something more deliberate. Whether intentional or not, however, I believe the habit is worth examining.

Yesterday, while attending a large and remarkably diverse gathering, I overheard a conversation that brought this to mind. A middle-aged man was recounting how an acquaintance had been struck by a car while riding his motorcycle. Thankfully, the injuries were minor.

As he told the story—and each time he repeated it—he referred to the driver simply as "this damn Mexican."

The driver's ethnicity had nothing whatsoever to do with the accident.

A few days earlier, someone shared a story about a grocery store employee who had done a poor job bagging groceries. Throughout the story, the employee was described as "this young African American woman."

Again, I found myself wondering why.

Would the accident have been any different had the driver been White, Asian, or Hispanic? Would the poorly packed groceries have been any less frustrating had the employee been a man, or an older woman, or someone whose race was never mentioned at all?

The answer, it seems to me, is no.

So why do we so often include these details?

When race, ethnicity, or gender has no bearing on the story, why does it become part of the description? Why does it seem natural to mention characteristics that contribute nothing to understanding what actually happened?

I do not ask these questions to provoke outrage or to accuse every speaker of harboring prejudice. I suspect many people have never stopped to consider the words they choose because they have heard the same patterns their entire lives. The descriptions emerge almost automatically, passed from one generation to the next until they become invisible.

But perhaps that is precisely why they deserve our attention.

Language does more than communicate facts. It quietly reveals what we notice, what we consider important, and what assumptions we carry without realizing it. Sometimes the smallest, seemingly insignificant phrases tell us more about ourselves than the stories we are trying to tell.

Perhaps these descriptions are harmless habits. Or perhaps they are remnants of old ways of seeing the world that continue to echo through our conversations long after we believe we have moved beyond them.

I don't know.

What I do know is that the question is worth asking—not to shame one another, but to understand ourselves a little better.

This is not merely an American conversation. It is one that belongs to every society, because every culture develops its own shorthand, its own assumptions, and its own blind spots.

Progress rarely begins with certainty.

More often, it begins with someone quietly asking, "Why do we say it that way?"

— David