"Oh Shit!": Curse or Cultural Construct?

Orange Grove Road

The wind beats against my eardrums. The scenery? Absolutely stunning!—6,000 ft. above sea level, some say even higher. A boar saunters down the curvy road; a gang of monkeys lurk in the tropical trees. “Beep! Beep!...Beeeep!” The horns sing their usual tune. Schoolboys dressed in traditional uniforms stare in suspicion, eyeing my ethnic hairstyle. As I pan the scene, the driver of the motorcycle sways to the left. The road, like many back in the States, could use repavement. It was too late. “Boom, boom!” Then an instantaneous “oh shit!” from the driver of the Honda Hero. Fortunately, the pothole didn’t damage the bike. After regrouping, we continued our journey to the local market. But wait. Did he just say what I think he did? As quickly as I entertained the idea, I dismissed it. After all, high elevation has a way of messing with folks’ ears.

In American discourse, the conventional idea of ‘cursing’ involves the utterance of one or more profane words. However, the English dictionary relegates this definition as secondary to a more inclusive understanding. The primary definition of a ‘curse,’ according to the English dictionary, is “an utterance intended to inflict harm on a person or group.” The word intention is very important. Here, ‘cursing’ refers, not to a set of words, but rather a linguistic demonstration of will. Thus, we must distinguish the difference between 'cursing' and profanity. Profanity (from the Latin pro fano) means “outside the sanctuary or temple,” referring to items (including language) not belonging inside a religious building. From this definition, profanity can be any worldly or nonreligious terminology. Profanity, secular words usually used to express emotion, and cursing, intentionally harmful discourses aimed at a particular person or group, are not synonymous.

Shit: A Case Study

Derived from Old English—scite (dung) and scitan (to defecate)—the word shit and its various expressions have evolved over time. The Old English word scite, meaning feces, developed into the Modern English word shit, a vague noun with multiple meanings and expressions. The definition of shit in modern English ranges from 'stuff' (this blog is good shit) to personal belongings (pack your shit and go!) to chemical material that excretes from our anal region (I gotta take a shit!) to an attitude (get your shit together) to trouble (you're in deep shit) to confrontation (when the shit hits the fan) to worthlessness (you ain't shit!) to appreciation (that's my shit!) to bragging (shit talking) to gossip (talking shit), and so much more. Its various meanings are expressed through music, in movies (see Forest Gump "shit happens" scene), and in our everyday lives. Like the word 'fuck,' shit has a plethora of meanings depending on the user and context.

My first trip to Northern India was a surreal adventure. Overnight trains. Best food of my life. Teaching a class with a Hindi translator. Extreme heat. A visit to the oldest University in the world. But nothing was like my experience one Friday evening. After a last minute invitation to preach at a local church, my colleagues and I hurried into the van and headed through the forest, into the village. Aside from the headlights on our vehicle, the entire village was pitch black. No streetlights. No house lights. Just total darkness. After my eyes adjusted, we slowly walked into what looked like an old shed. Halfway through preaching, the lights came on. A few ‘hallelujahs” permeated the silence. After service, we walked next door to the Pastor’s house for food and fellowship. Before I could bite into my first piece of puri, the lights switched off. “Ohh Shit!,” the entire room—Pastors, church leaders, and Christian kids—proclaimed in synchronicity.

The Pastor's house after preaching

I could not dismiss it this time. It was unequivocal. A group of Christians committed the unbelievably profane, just a few feet away from the church building. They cursed! Or did they?

Cursing: A Cross-cultural Analysis

Cursing, or curse words, is culturally confined. What is considered profane in one culture may be acceptable in another and vice versa. There is nothing inherently evil about words. Words are primarily constructs; this is part of the reason why language evolves over time. The difference between cursing in the fundamental sense and profanity is vital. Rather than referring to a group of linguistically ambivalent words (profanity), cursing involves intention and will. Within this context, we can no longer narrowly and naively label musical artists as the proprietors of our cursing culture. For although they may curse linguistically, many uplift and empower listeners psychologically and dare I say, spiritually (listen to the Blues, what Dr. James Cone calls our “secular-spirituals”). On the other hand, many politicians and preachers, despite their politically correct, socially acceptable, and linguistically safe language, curse the universal “other” via political and theological discourses. Their subtle yet subversive anti-women, anti-gay, anti-black and Latino, anti-immigrant, anti-Arabic, and anti-human campaign speeches and sermons are more harmful and destructive than any musical artist or average person’s use of profanity could ever be. Consider the Declaration of ‘Independence.’ In all its linguistic beauty and political hoopla, it is a deceptive and dehumanizing document. A lie. A sham. A curse? You don’t have to be a legal scholar to know that when Thomas Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal,” he, and the rest of America’s ‘Founding Fathers,’ excluded blacks, Indians, and women from the right of equality and the realm of humanity. By denying women the right to vote, blacks the right to be free, and Indians the right to their land, the ‘Founding Fathers’ cursed their vulnerable ‘inferiors,’ politically and socially. And just in case you think this is merely a historical issue, please think again. 

Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum, the former GOP Presidential candidate, marked the new year with this statement: “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money,” referring to blacks receiving federal aid, a.k.a. welfare checks. (Although whites receive more welfare then any other race in America). Wait, there’s more! Charles Worley, a pastor from North Carolina, recently suggested, during a sermon!, that gays and lesbians be tortured on an electric fence and proclaimed that “forty years ago [gays] would’ve hung, Bless God, from an oak tree” (emphasis added). Rick Santorum, a popular politician, and Charles Worley, a provocative pastor—both white and both men—are just two examples of how current politicians and religious ‘leaders’ continue to curse in the names of racism and homophobia. For too long, the politician’s podium and the preacher’s pulpit have been a collective platform of unchecked power, control, and cursing!

Charles Worley

So why are very few people, especially so-called religious folk, talking about this issue? And why, at the same time, are many of these same so-called religious folk going out their way to police and protest profane language amongst children, in churches, and throughout the community while permitting dehumanizing theo-political discourse in the same spaces? This is a serious question.

We must acquire a more comprehensive understanding of the idea of cursing that does not easily and conveniently demonize curse words while accepting destructive discourses. When a rapper calls a woman a “bitch,” the world responds in uproar, as I believe we should! But when a politician characterizes the same woman as inferior and less than human or when a pastor encourages women to ‘stay in their place,’ most of the world remains silent. And this silence is the essence of our problem.

Mass Media, in its production and management of consciousness, is more harmful than any curse word could ever be. Mass media’s selective censoring of certain words does not protect our children from the much more devastating curses of mass incarceration, mass discrimination, and mass (mis)education. This traumatic trio is a perpetual curse intended for and directed to the world’s most vulnerable: the poor, physically and mentally challenged, women, minorities, etc.

What we say and what we communicate or what we say and what we really mean by what we say can be completely different. For example, when many (not all) patriotic individuals proudly say, “God Bless America,” some of them really mean, “And fuck the rest of the world!” (Sorry but I gotta keep it 100). Unspoken language and nonverbal communication are the most dangerous kinds of curses. It is this linguistic violence, not a rapper’s “fuck” or a teenager’s “shit” or my sporadic use of profanity that is the real issue.

Just to be clear: this is not an attempt to promote profanity. Rather, this is an all too brief investigation of the ways in which certain language is labeled sacred and others sacrilegious. And how that labeling, performed by an elite population of power and privilege, tends to be distributed along racial, cultural, and religious lines.

So, curse or cultural construction? Fuck it, who gives a shit? Please excuse my…Indian.