I often hear people who oppose any discussion on diversity complain and say “you can’t say anything any more without being accused of being a racist, sexist, or whatever” I usually get irritated when I hear that, because in general that is not true and is usually a passive-aggressive way of not taking responsibility for being offensive.

But I do have to say I am starting to wonder. It seems like there is a preponderance of people on the left, right, and middle monitoring everyone’s words and reporting out what they’ve heard without any context. I think that it might make a difference if we started asking the question when we hear something that sounds off, is to simply ask, “what did you mean by that?’ and then wait for an explanation, instead of assuming we know what people meant, what their intentions are and accuse them of lying. if we ask someone what they mean, we also have to be open to what they mean is not what we are ready to accuse them of.

I see this all over, and now especially with the presidential election. It has gotten so bad that we don’t get to hear what candidates say about the issues.

We need to start a movement and put the question “what did you mean by that’ back in the English lexicon.