2016 has certainly been a year. I don’t have to list off any current events for people to read that statement and share in a mutual sight toward the outcome of the past 12 months. There have been triumphs and defeats, but nothing made me more dissatisfied with 2016 than when I came across an article, “Dictionary.com’s 2016 Word of the Year: Xenophobia.”
Dictionary.com defines xenophobia as “fear or hatred of foreigners, people from different cultures, or strangers. It can also refer to fear or dislike of customs, dress, and cultures of people with backgrounds different from our own.”
If this doesn’t sum of the year of 2016, I don’t know what would. Even looking past the election and the new leader of our country, this year has solidified one fear that I’ve had for this country for a very long time: we are inherently a world that is intolerant. I am not saying that everyone is racist, or sexist, or a xenophobe, but we all fundamentally have a fear of people that aren’t like us.
According to Dictionary.com, “The word xenophobia is actually relatively new and only entered English in the late 1800s. It finds its roots in two Greek words, xénos meaning ‘stranger, guest,’ and phóbos meaning ‘fear, panic.’” Even with its rather recent inception, the word has found its way into the everyday discourse over the past few years, specifically in 2016.
The most surprising fact, however, might be the fact that the word has been looked up far more frequently by the rest of the world and not the U.S. This could be for a number of reasons.
1. We elected a president who is a known xenophobe, and this frightens other countries.
2. Other events around the world have been far more affected by xenophobia than the U.S. election. (A commonly overlooked fact.)
It is important to remember that there is more unrest than just in the country we live in. South African workers unrest and overall xenophobia has plagued those particular territories. Brexit and the hate crimes that ensued afterward scared most of the nation. The Syrian Refugee Crisis rocked the world. Yes, we have a xenophobic president, but it is naïve to think this is the sole reason this word has penetrated our culture in recent years.
I think this word of the year, and even 2016 as a whole, is one of those years that will be written in history books as a lesson that we must learn from. If we don’t, history will only repeat itself.