The Language of Belonging: Navigating Identity in the Borderlands
By Bob Hembree
Original April 2020 – Revised April 2025
Into the Desert Morning
The morning light spills across the plateau, painting the distant mesas in shades of amber and rust. I stand at the edge of Page, where pavement surrenders to wilderness, watching as a tumbleweed negotiates its path between two worlds. The air tastes of sage and possibility. Before me, a roadside stand unfurls its handwritten banner—"Indian Jewelry"—the words fluttering in the breeze like confessions.
I pause, feeling the weight of that word—"Indian"—a designation I've been taught to avoid, a linguistic relic I believed had been corrected generations ago. In the coastal cities where I spent most of my life, we had acknowledged Columbus's navigational error and adjusted our language accordingly. Yet here, at this threshold between cultures, the word persists, not as an oversight but as a deliberate choice.
I run my fingers over turquoise stones polished smooth as river rocks, their cool surfaces holding memories longer than my comprehension. The vendor, a Navajo woman with eyes that have witnessed decades of changing language politics, watches me with patient amusement. She recognizes the hesitation in my hands, the careful selection of words forming behind my eyes before I speak.
The Archaeology of Words
What fossils do we make of words, burying some while displaying others in the museums of acceptable conversation? When does language become artifact, and when does it remain living tissue, evolving with use? The words we choose reveal the invisible borders we've internalized—those cognitive boundaries that separate "us" from "them," "normal" from "other," "acceptable" from "offensive."
I was born into a lexicon I did not create. Like most children, I inherited not just vocabulary but the invisible architecture of assumptions that supported it. In the bubble of my childhood, racial and cultural differences existed primarily as abstractions—things looked at as "odd, not normal like us." This normality was never questioned, never examined. It simply was—the water in which we swam, unaware of its temperature or composition until we encountered different waters.
Psychologists call this phenomenon "ingroup favoritism" or sometimes "implicit bias"—our tendency to prefer those who resemble us and to organize our understanding of the world according to these preferences. Neuroscientist David Eagleman describes how our brains create neural shortcuts that, left unexamined, calcify into certainties: "Your brain is built of cells called neurons and glia—hundreds of billions of them. Each one of these cells is as complicated as a city."
These cellular cities form alliances, creating neighborhoods of understanding that determine, often without our conscious awareness, how we perceive and categorize the world. The language we inherit becomes both map and territory, guiding our movement through social spaces while simultaneously defining those spaces.
The Grammar of Growing Wiser
The unlearning comes slowly, like water shaping stone. Each conversation forms a new channel, each interaction erodes another certainty. I remember my first assignment for the Chronicle after moving to Page—an interview at the Navajo Village Heritage Center. Tomas Hunt, the center's owner, welcomed my questions with grace that belied my awkwardness.
"Can I say this?" I asked the Chronicle's Navajo editor, words balanced carefully on my tongue like unfamiliar foods. "Is this an appropriate term?" Each question revealed another boundary I hadn't known existed, another assumption embedded in language I'd taken for granted.
The desert teaches patience. Time moves differently here, measured not in seconds but in geological epochs, not in news cycles but in the gradual emergence of canyons. Perhaps learning a new language—not just of words but of understanding—requires similar patience. The erosion of old certainties creates space for new perceptions, but the process cannot be rushed.
This landscape of language feels particularly treacherous for those of us diagnosed with being "old white guys"—a condition that transcends both age and complexion. It's a mindset more than a demographic, a particular way of moving through the world assuming our experience is universal, our perspective standard. The condition manifests as a peculiar blindness to our own particularity, our own strangeness when viewed from other vantage points.
The Invisible Boundaries
There exists an unwritten rulebook, its sections constantly revised and expanded, outlining which words belong to whom. Any "belittling word or phrase used by old white guys toward another race, culture or sexual orientation is off limits." This seems straightforward enough until you realize the vastness of what you don't know—the elaborate taxonomy of offense that has evolved while you weren't paying attention.
The challenge isn't simply learning which words to avoid, but understanding the complex history and context that made them harmful in the first place. It's not enough to memorize a list of taboo terms—we must comprehend why certain combinations carry weight others don't.
"I love watermelon and chicken," I might say innocently, only to discover that these ordinary preferences carry extraordinary baggage when expressed in certain contexts or sequences. The problem isn't in the words themselves but in their historical resonance, the way they've been weaponized to reduce complex identities to simplistic stereotypes.
To navigate this territory requires constant vigilance, a commitment to thinking about "word choices AND the order and proximity" in which we use them. "That's a lot of thinking for an old white guy," I admit, not as excuse but observation. The mental gymnastics required to avoid inadvertent harm sometimes feel exhausting, but what is this fatigue compared to the exhaustion of those who have spent lifetimes navigating around the careless words of others?
Between Two Worlds
Standing at the roadside stand, I am caught between worlds—between the coastal cities where I learned one set of rules and this desert community where different conventions apply, between the language of my upbringing and the vocabulary I'm still learning, between intention and impact. The jewelry gleams in the sunlight, stories told in silver and stone.
I think about my friends from India, genuine "Indians" in the geographical sense, whose heritage carries its own complex history of colonization and reclamation. I think about the Navajo, Hopi, and other Indigenous peoples who have inhabited this region since time immemorial, their identities labeled and relabeled by outsiders with varying degrees of respect and understanding.
What right have I to question how people choose to identify themselves? What arrogance lies in assuming my linguistic preferences should override theirs? Perhaps being "woke" (a term that carries its own complicated politics) isn't about mastering a static list of acceptable terms but developing the capacity to listen, to adapt, to recognize the multiplicity of valid perspectives.
The Slow Awakening
We are not exactly "woke" yet, those of us diagnosed with being old white guys. That awakening "may take a few more generations." The most perplexing realization is that this condition appears "in all age groups. To look at us, some of us aren't white or old." The diagnosis transcends visible characteristics, describing instead an orientation to the world, a particular relationship to power and language.
I imagine future generations looking back at our fumbling attempts to navigate these waters with the same bemused patience we might feel watching someone learn to use a new technology. They will have their own blind spots, their own struggles to overcome, but perhaps they will build upon our halting progress, developing greater fluency in the language of mutual respect.
For now, I continue learning, stumbling occasionally, recovering, advancing. I ask questions, listen to the answers, adjust my understanding. This desert landscape teaches that transformation happens not in dramatic upheavals but in persistent, minute changes—wind and water shaping stone, word by word reshaping consciousness.
"It's more about aligning what's in our hearts with the hearts of others," I realize. The turquoise feels warm now against my skin, having absorbed the heat of my handling. The vendor smiles, recognizing another small moment of connection across the borders of experience.
"Help us out," I would say to those with greater knowledge. "We'll keep trying."
And in that effort—imperfect, ongoing, sincere—perhaps lies the beginning of understanding.