Hybrids, Mongrels and Half-Breeds: Racism in Language

Language carries with it more complexity than many of its speaker are consciously aware of. Those who have devoted themselves to a scholarly study of English are, it may be hoped, more conscious of this than most, but even so tend to underestimate the depth of meaning and the varied emotional associations with the words we use.
We cannot simply accept the term “hybrid” to refer to human beings without some acknowledgement of the history and what we may call the emotional baggage of the word.

Thomas Huxley preferred the term “mongrel” to “hybrid” because he believed that hybrid implied a cross of two different species, but that mongrel was more accurate to refer to mixed types of a single species. In light of the history of the polygenist/monogenist debate on human origins we would perhaps do well to avoid using terms which imply a specific difference among humans. However, to us, “mongrel” is a far more offensive term than “hybrid”, since it firstly is now used almost exclusively to describe dogs and secondly is associated with an idea of unknown, unknowable and therefore somehow disreputable heritage.

It is significant that the second of these negative associations with the term “mongrel” itself reveals some assumed value judgements. Darwin’s legacy is, in part, a conviction of the importance of “good breeding”, and a belief that unknown or unreliable ancestry is itself a negative commentary on a person. In Annette, the Métis Spy, Joseph Collins, describing Little Poplar, comments offhand that he “would not have a dog unless [he] was sure about his pedigree” (Collins, 109). This attitude toward breeding and its application in a description of a human being’s worth is a legacy of Darwin which still remains for us today.
To return to the idea of language and its implied meanings, consider the use of language and the value judgements implicit within the words used to describe racial categories. In Annette, Collins employs a kind of animal nomenclature to the native population, which was common in his time and continues to present itself today.

Terms like “brave” and particularly “squaw”, while within their literal etymology carry no negative connotations (just as “wench” simply means woman, and even “nigger” just comes from the Spanish for “black”) carry associations based on the way they are used. Squaw comes almost directly from the Algonquin word for “woman”, yet as it is used by Collins it carries a particular meaning. “Squaw” is used as “cow” or “sow” or “hen”, it is an animal nomenclature that fundamentally reinforces the otherness and ultimately the inhumanity of native peoples. The native women are not called “women”, because the word “woman” means “white woman”.

The term “half-breed” —used almost exclusively to refer to the Métis in Annette— also carries with it to us —and almost certainly to Collins— a whole series of value judgements. In zoological nomenclature, a breed is a subspecies with viably distinct population. Referring to the Métis as “half-breed” implies that the decomposition thesis (as advanced by Edwards, Thierry, Arnold, Nott and Gliddon) is accurate—that “French” and “Indian” are permanent races, but that the mix of these two races is destined to eventually die out or revert back to one of the original sources. “Half-breed”, as a term, denies any permanence to the Métis.

Language isn't neutral, and it absorbs the associations we bring to it. So words for groups we distain in society come to be insulting words, and are eventually deemed inappropriate for their original use (words like "dumb" and "retard") for example. The problem, then, is twofold. First we must use words that do not carry implied mockery or condemnation, and secondly we must not attach mockery or condemnation to the new words we use.

And in relation to the issue currently at hand, I still wonder. Is my course on "hybridity" poorly named?