Sticks and stones: when name-calling gets nasty
What is in a name? Well rather a lot actually, particularly if you are young, male and a car enthusiast. Setting off any alarms all you boy racers out there?
That boy racer label has been making headlines again after Judith Collins threatened to become the Minister of Car Squashing. As pleasing as it might be to see the fuel injected fools lose their toys, we already have laws around street racing. The 2003 Land Transport Amendment, better known as the Boy Racer Act covers off nicely what is legal and what is pushing it. But there’s that name again. Boy Racer. Actually it sounds rather sweet, young and peppy but the label has become a dumping ground for all sorts of carbon-fuelled idiocy.
There’s no love lost for boy racers in some quarters of Christchurch. Mayor Bob Parker called them “ugly, immature and embarrassing”. Hard to disagree with, but Canterbury University academic Dr Simon Kingham points out that not all boy racers are criminally minded. And he has a point that you can talk tough without negatively labelling people. Name the behaviour, not the hooligan. Hang-on ‘hooligan’? When does a soccer fan become a hooligan? When a headline says it seems. Labels, we’ve had loads of them, just ask the punk, the yuppie, the like radical, or the barmy army.
When nicknames cease to be cute though is when a bit of a moral outrage gains traction and before you know it you have a panic on your hands. Jeering headlines can get neighbourhoods up in arms and in no-time-flat the labelled group has one mighty negative image to live up too.
For those in the business of communication, care needs to be taken in how labels are bandied about. The point is if you stigmatise you desensitise and throw down the gauntlet for the label wearers to play up more than ever. After all they’ve been handed a tough rep, best they follow through and go raise some rowdy hell.
Tags: boy racer, Judith Collins