By Walter E. Block (February 2026)
Quick answer: Canada is very woke.
What has the Great White (pardon me for using this word) North done to warrant this characterization? They have come up with eighteen words and phrases that are offensive; you say them only at your peril, at least in our presently frozen country
What are these verbiages? They are as follows:
Ghetto; sell someone down the river; blackmail; brainstorm; savage; gypped; pow wow; tribe; spooky; black sheep; blind spot; blindsided; first world problem; spirit animal; tone deaf; lame; grandfathered in; crippled.
Say what?
Some of these are easy to understand, from the social justice point of view, that is. It is clear that savage, pow wow, tribe and spirit animal are cultural appropriations from native Indians. But why not, then, also, prohibit teepee, buffalo, wild horses, tent, beads, wampum and other words associated with this group of people? And what is so wrong about appropriations from other cultures? Should we not use penicillin, the Salk vaccine, AI, etc., since we didn’t invent these things?
Similarly, any fair-minded person can readily see why the differently-abled snowflakes would take offense at tone deaf; lame; crippled, blind spot; blindsided. But should we not then add to the list words such as color blind, near sighted, far sighted; deaf; hard of hearing, etc.
And, yes, we can easily discern why hyper sensitive black people (people of color is now ok, but perish even the thought about colored people, despite the fact that the National Association of Colored People has not yet seen fit to change their name), would take it amiss if people used sell someone down the river; blackmail; brainstorm, black sheep, spooky. But there are many other such words we could at once add to this list; black hole (in astronomy); blacksmith; blackout; blacktop; blacking; nonblack; blackfly; blackbird; blackberry; blackguard; blacklist; blackjack; blackboard. These, too, should be condemned as irretrievably racist, a product of systemic racism. (It turns out that there are no fewer than 279 words with the letters “black” in them in the English language; space limitations do not allow me to list them all; alas!). And then there is cotton, sugar cane, tobacco, all crops picked by slaves; should these be unmentionable too?
The feminists see red (is this color now allowed; see pow wow, tribe, above) with the use of it grandfathered in (pardon that expression, please!). But what about the word man? Even woman and person should be shelved; hint: look at the last sexist syllables of those offensive words. Perhaps we could use wodaughter and perdaughter in their places? Who knows?
Similarly, gypped is understood, but there are numerous other words of this ilk, which cannot appear in this family-oriented periodical; should the mere mention of them, even to warn against them, be verboten? Even the way Lenny Bruce used the N word? Indubitably. Yes, of course this first world problem is insulting. The poor, the impoverished, those from developing nations (many are retrogressing) can readily take umbrage at this phrase. Maybe, while we are at it, we should also ban poor, poverty, impoverished, etc.?
We have here a linguistic land mine. We have been told to mind our p’s and q’s, but that is now just the tip of the iceberg. We will now have to walk as if on egg shells regarding this new lexicon too. (Waitasec. Iceberg sounds as a disparagement to my sensitive ears. Won’t it affront tall people, cold people?)
Is opposition to these words and phrases based on the blathering of some Canadian drunk on maple syrup? No, these orders from on high come to us from no less than the venerable and venerated Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. For those not in the know, the CBC is an arm of the government. It is similar to other state-controlled news and opinion outlets such as exist in countries such as China, North Korea and Cuba. There, the government not only makes the news, it reports on it too. So, when the CBC sets down these new linguistic rules and conventions, all Canadians must take note.
The CBC is part of the “fourth estate.” What are the other “estates?” There is the executive, the Prime Minister; the legislative, the Parliament; and the judicial, headed by the Supreme Court of Canada. Each of these three according to democratic theory, is charged with keeping an “eye” on the other two. The role of the fourth estate, the media, is to monitor all of the other three. But how can they do so if they are part and parcel of the government in the first place. They cannot do any such thing.
The CBC should go the way of PetroCan: privatization!
Table of Contents
Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics, College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. He earned his PhD in economics at Columbia University in 1972. He has taught at Rutgers, SUNY Stony Brook, Baruch CUNY, Holy Cross and the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of more than 600 refereed articles in professional journals, three dozen books, and thousands of op eds (including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and numerous others). He lectures widely on college campuses, delivers seminars around the world and appears regularly on television and radio shows. He is the Schlarbaum Laureate, Mises Institute, 2011; and has won the Loyola University Research Award (2005, 2008) and the Mises Institute’s Rothbard Medal of Freedom, 2005; and the Dux Academicus award, Loyola University, 2007. Prof. Block counts among his friends Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. He was converted to libertarianism by Ayn Rand. Block is old enough to have played chess with Friedrich Hayek and once met Ludwig von Mises, and shook his hand. Block has never washed that hand since. So, if you shake his hand (it’s pretty dirty, but what the heck) you channel Mises.
Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast
2 Responses
The phrase “feminists see red” reminded me of an incident working with a startup in 2019. A group of younger employees started complaining about various offensive terms used in the company. One of these affronts to humanity was a conference room named “Red Pill,” clearly as a reference to The Matrix. It was explained to the hopelessly uneducated that this was not what we thought it meant at all, but actually a reference to a misogynistic (and no doubt far right) movement called the Manosphere. This metaphor probably had been used by some in that movement, but it was like saying Hitler admired the painting “Isle of the Dead” by Arnold Böcklin, therefore one should henceforth never look upon it.
Also around this time at many companies emerged a kind of woke blacklist–except that the word “blacklist” was itself on the blacklist. This was inevitably followed by a witch hunt (another proscribed term) to expunge said naughty words. Wokism truly is tedious.
I am a first generation American. My father was an Irish Catholic Canadian drunk from Trinity Bay Newfoundland who abandoned my mother and my siblings in a Bronx tenement. For me he was the iconic Canadian. With the advent of Mark Carney, I’m having second thoughts.