In January, following the lead of the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work, Michigan’s Dept. of Health and Human Services banned the use of the phrase “field worker.”
A field worker is usually defined today as someone who works outside of the office and travels to different locations. It is less frequently but still used to define a farm laborer. And it’s being banned because of “concerns” that using words like “going into the field” or “doing field work” may have racist connotations.
(I’m not making that up!)
I wonder how that’s going to work?
Let’s see. In the future…
* Speakers will no longer “field” questions from an audience, but “harvest” them.
* Baseball will be played on “locations of grass with strips of dirt.”
* Architecture and biology will no longer be “fields” of study, but just plain “subjects of study.” No, wait. That’s not right! Due to the possibility that post-colonialized people may be offended by “subjects of study,” they will be “thingies you can study.”