The University of Southern California School of Social Work is blazing new trails in finding racism. After intense research, years of study, numerous Masters Degrees and PhD theses, they have mined the English language and found yet another word that must be banned in the service of antiracism.

“Field.”

The word “field” must be banned, lest black people be triggered. I have yet to meet a black person triggered by the word, but undoubtedly some social worker will find one after a decade of searching.

Is there some sort of competition of which I am not aware? Find the racism inherent in word X? Or is this just garden-variety idiocy, of which we find an infinite variety in academia?

In social work, as in many walks of life, people do “field work.” It refers to leaving the office and entering the real world where real people, who never would imagine the world “field” is racist, exist.

Entering the real world unprepared to confront racism in every nook and cranny must be avoided at all cost, so by all means don’t do “field work.”

The new politically correct word is apparently “practicum.” I suppose it is a good thing that social work students should learn a bit of Latin, but expect that in a year or two it will be discovered that Latin was spoken in Europe by people who owned slaves, so they will have to ditch that word for something African.

Except that Africans were often perpetrators of the slave trade. They actually invented the African slave trade, so perhaps they will have to choose some other language, or make up a word.

But don’t let a White person make up the word, because that would be racist. Find somebody whose ancestors had nothing to do with any possible violation of modern-day ethics. Surely such a person exists. If not, perhaps we can ask Chat-GPT to come up with a term, such as DKJFALKJS.

Except, damn, we are using the alphabet of the oppressors. What to do? As far as I can tell, every syllable ever used in modern languages has probably been uttered by somebody who has an ancestor who has done something wrong, so perhaps use the sounds from a click language? I haven’t done any anthropological research on tribes who use clicks, but perhaps one of them has yet to be linked to some social ill or another?

We can hope.

Being woke is complicated, although rife with research opportunities. Not to mention the fact that it allows petty people to exercise petty powers over people much smarter and more productive than they.

The contents of the letter explaining the reasoning behind the change from “field work” to “practicum” is a masterwork.

“This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” the email reportedly reads. “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”

Farmers will soon be tilling their practicums. The field of research called Physics will soon be the practicum of Physics? Imagine the possibilities!

Take that, Stanford! We can find racism in more words than you!

Do black athletes need to quit playing on football fields? Should they be football “practicums?” Doesn’t sound right. Practicum and field aren’t synonyms. How about football “grass rectangles?”  Or “the place where black bodies are exploited?” Yeah, that works too.

“Here comes the team running out onto the grass rectangle, ready to play!” or “The team has entered the rectangle where black bodies are exploited!” They both have a ring to them, honestly.

I despise these people. They are nothing but petty tyrants.