This is the illusionist, in which I, Helen Zaltzman, get a great deal on language.
30% off with only minor stains.
In this episode, we're returning to the theme of renaming for two food related renamings.
The first one that mostly happened, the second one that mostly did not, but in a good way.
Content note the first part of the episode concerns an ableist slur, so there are incidences of that slurred and discussions of ableism and later anti black racism.
Also, if you are involved or have been involved with a renaming project of any kind, then I'd love to hear about it.
It's a topic I plan to keep returning to get in touch on with the show.
In the UK, there's a fairly common type of suite of candy in Us English that is a kind of medium firm gummy that comes in fruit esque flavors and vivid colours shaped like very small truncated cones or pyramids decorated with little grooves.
And in 2022, some retailers started selling these sweets under a new name, mini gems.
But a lot of manufacturers and vendors still use the sweets previous name midget gems.
And it took Doctor Erin Pritchard pointing out that midget is a slur to get any of them to do anything about it.
I'm Doctor Erin Pritchard.
I'm actually a doctor of human geography, but I specialize in geographies of disability and so now I am a lecturer in disability studies and special educational needs and core member of the center for Cultural Disability Studies.
In August 2020, Erin published an article in the big Issue north with the title, why don't we just stop using the word midget?
And then I thought, right, let's try and be proactive about it.
So Erin wrote to the supermarket M and S, which has more than 1000 stores within the UK, as well as around 400 internationally.
And I wrote to M and s and I said, look, I don't think you're intending to cause any offense, but this word is a form of hate speech and not many people know that because with dwarfism there hasn't been much activism.
And they got back and they said, oh, well, you know, we don't mean to cause any offense.
And I go, okay, fair enough.
So you're going to change it then?