Recently, in “The President’s Brief” from The Marshall Project, Carroll Bogert penned an op-ed piece in The Washington Post.  She wrote:

Since Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies last week, gleeful headlines have sprouted across the media, with a new descriptor for the former president: “felon.”

“Donald Trump, Felon.” The New York Times

“Trump is a felon. Here’s why that should matter in the 2024 race.” The Washington Post

“Injustice: First Felon President.” New York Post

Ms. Bogert goes on about how the word felon had fallen into disuse, and that “the impetus behind the sudden widespread use of the word ‘felon’ is to take Trump down a peg, to label him as no better than a common criminal. And that is the problem.”

Years ago, that word (“felon”) was fraught with stigma, a stigma that stuck for a lifetime, but it mostly stuck to Black and Brown people, not the rare Great White Defendant.

More than 20 years ago, people impacted by the criminal legal system pushed back on the various stigmatizing terms inherent in the criminal legal system and advised the use of people first language.  Eddie Ellis, founder of the Center for Nuleadership on Urban Solutions and considered by many impacted by the criminal legal system the Dean of the Criminal Legal System and the Nontraditional Approach to the Criminal Legal System, wrote about people first language when talking or writing about people impacted by the criminal legal system.  Trump is no exception, in the sense of using people first language, despite his conviction on 34 felonies.

Note though to the President of The Marshall Project. People first language as it relates to people impacted by the criminal legal system was first uplifted by Eddie Ellis, and others who refused to wear those stigmatizing labels. Even if we concede that people first language was used by “disability” advocates, it was people impacted by the stigmatizing language of the criminal legal system that put this language on trial, and won, in that it made its way all the way up to the U.S. Attorney General’s office under President Obama. And the language changed at the top and had a trickle-down effect.

We’ve come a long way from copspeak. Let’s not let Trump derail something else.

In my next blog I’ll write about some writing projects in the mix.