Thinking About Labels

I feel like this is a subject we get lots of mixed signals on, and it's one I've struggled with for many years. We learn even in elementary school about the obvious stuff: it's bad to label others in a way that reinforces biases, stereotypes, or negative feelings. So we don't toss around words like loser, freak, or worse when we're talking about those around us. Except that kids these days do just that as a show of affection, of all things. We also don't apply harmful labels to ourselves. Except most of us do that too. But we shouldn't, and neither should the kids. Right?

So much for the easy part. The problem is what you do after that because we have a natural need not only to comprehend the world around us, but to better understand ourselves, and part of that is classifying things. That's a tree. That's a type of table. Mars is a planet but Pluto isn't because it's too dwarfish, or something. As for that panda over there: it's either a bear or a raccoon, and someday someone will figure it out for sure.

Note: I'm labeling this version of this song as "not my favorite."

Classifying things can be helpful, but for some reason we're forbidden from doing it with the most influential things in our lives: people.

Or are we? A lot of times our reaction to negative labels is to flood the world with positive ones: that kid isn't geeky, he's smart. She's not brutal, she's athletic. But last year a coworker of mine put out an email linking to information on why we shouldn't reinforce our students by calling them smart. It had to do with unintentionally encouraging kids to rely on innate intelligence while devaluing effort. If a kid is "smart" (s)he doesn't need to work hard in school, etc. and the most important thing becomes maintaining the impression of smartness and not actually learning new things. I understood that because I struggled with it personally in school and I've seen other kids deal with it too, but does that mean all positive labels run the same risk? You're really brave. Well, then I guess I have to do stupid, dangerous things to maintain that label. You're such a good person. In that case, I certainly can't show any kind of weakness. Even our most powerful labels might fall prey to this conundrum. I am a child of God. Then I must be certain to never appear to struggle with anything that anyone might possibly call "sin" no matter how ill-conceived their definition of it may be. In fact, I better not struggle at all and just pretend everything makes sense to me. Either that, or we don't have to try to be good after all. It's pointless because we're all sinners.

We can even make it more mundane (ack, label!). I'm white and American. Does that mean I have to be arrogant and ignorant? Does it mean I have to try really hard to prove that I'm not arrogant or ignorant? Actually, despite my looks, I've never considered myself "white" or even caucasian because my family history is really quite ethnically diverse. But there isn't a quick word for that. Do you see what I'm saying? Either way we go we're setting up expectations: we're putting people into boxes they may not wholly fit into. They may not want to fit.

The problem with labels is this: they positively identify people and things as belonging to a category, which means they also carry additional meanings that may not be suitable for a given context. The big advantage of labels is this: they positively identify people and things as belonging to a category, which means they also carry additional meanings that may be suitable for a given context. They both aid and hamper communication.

In high school I watched a documentary about some of the great jazz musicians of years gone by. One man recalled Duke Ellington's hatred of labels, saying that the greatest compliment one could receive from him went as follows: "you are beyond category."

That seemed so open and full of possibility that it really appealed to me at the time, but it's frustrated me since because it's still a label, it's just in denial about it. This makes it even less useful than other labels because it's basically saying, "here's a label for you that means that no other labels apply to you so you can't really be anything. Either that, or you have to be everything."

Can I call Duke Ellington a musician? That's a label, and it does what labels do. It tells me about him and it establishes expectations for some aspect of his existence. But what if he wants to transcend that label? Can I call him an artist? That's more broad, so it gives him more wiggle room, but it might also be more restrictive because it implies certain personality traits more strongly than the label "musician." How about human. Can he be a human? That's such a big box that he doesn't even have to do anything to fit inside it. But what is a human? Well, I know it's not a Panda, but aren't we all genetically a little bit deviant from one another? Well then, can Duke Ellington be one of the X-men? Whoa, I think we're moving in the wrong direction now. Maybe I'm just being (label!) cynical.

We have to use labels, otherwise we could never communicate efficiently. Even giving a name to someone is giving them a label, as my daughters will tell you. We recently had a talk about the meanings of all of their names and boy (girl?), was that a mistake. I ended up saying terribly awkward things like, "Not everyone's name can mean everything, girls! Just because her name means the name of some good quality doesn't mean you don't have that quality too. Her name doesn't mean the name of the good quality that your name means..." Blech. What do they want from me, to call them all by a list of desirable virtues? That would certainly make life better for them.

We have to use labels, but we also have to careful about how much stock we put in them, either on the giving or the receiving end. I had a conversation once about how we define ourselves by our limitations, and that's a good thing. By the way, even "good" and "evil" are labels, and they can be some of the most powerful we have, and some of the most damaging when misapplied. Point is, saying "I am a child of God" can feel incredibly liberating and empowering, because a child of God has limitless potential. Paradoxically (yay!) that label also implies extreme limitations because there are many things a child of God is expected to do and not do. The label lays out a course for life: not all the details, perhaps, but a path that is at the same time generic and specific. It grants direction and momentum by eliminating movement in all but a select few directions. The same is true of any label. Perhaps which directions are cut off and which are enabled depends on how we receive the label.

We could carry this on forever, extrapolating the implications of various labels, but I've already gone on for too long. This is just an insomnia-induced brain dump on the topic. In fact the specific label I was thinking of at the time I decided to write this post was "insomniac." I've had trouble sleeping for a couple of months, which I learned puts my problem in the box called "chronic insomnia" and I was wondering if I should think of myself as an insomniac. That made me feel icky. It felt like I was giving the word control over my life. Maybe there are some labels that we should allow to have control over us, but I don't think "insomniac" is one. At least not for me.

And now, ironically (or perhaps appropriately), I'm going to add labels to this post, publish it, and go to bed.