What is Community?
I have an aversion to buzzwords. Too often I hear people treat words not as a means to an end, but as ends unto themselves. And buzzwords make for tedious conversations. A person who uses ‘decolonize’ and ‘end-stage capitalism’ in the same breath is not a very interesting person to talk to. The whole thing feels rehearsed, like I am being lectured to in a graduate seminar. The goal of a good conversation is genuine connection, not a lecture. But of all the buzzwords that have leaked into popular culture, the one I hear most often and which causes me the most grief is ‘community.’ It is so commonly misapplied that most people do not recognize it as a buzzword anymore. Its definitional slippage happened slowly and quietly without our noticing. What do we mean when we talk about the LGBTQ Community, the Black Community, the AAPI Community? What are we referring to in the world? Recently I was reading about progeria, an extremely rare genetic disorder. The author made numerous ...
