Labels are ways to make things make sense. We use them to categorise, to compartmentalise, to ensure something
exists, is real, and when we see it again, makes sense. If we had to think about what every single thing is
when we saw it again and what its relatives are, we would grow tired the minute we wake up. Labels work as
variables in code; we set them and then use them later, using what is inside the variable itself.
People start to not think about what is inside the label itself but just see the label as an amalgamation of
one object and as the object itself, even if the characteristics and makeup of the object are right in front
of them. People who harbour extremist/populist views use this labelling constantly, trying to devalue people
as not what makes them up, but through the label of "other", thinking of that label and what it means only,
instead of the characteristics itself. But we aren't in slur territory yet; you still have to think about the
labels.
Through this, the only part of labels we have to remove is the idea of the label itself having meaning, which
is where slurs come in. Slurs are pure emotional payoff done by riding the wave of history. While stereotypes
look at a warped present, and assumptions look at the future, labels become slurs through the potency of
history alone. The user of the slur wants to get the emotional payoff of using the slur without any cognitive
inertia, as slurs only work when they have a high emotional payoff. Thinking about what it means, which would
mean thinking about the present of what it means to use the slur, and the future potency of the slur,
completely dampens its potency. Through being able to override these decision-making capacities through
emotional payoff alone, it sets it apart from the other effects of labels we have mentioned earlier, and gives
a shortcut to dehumanise people.
When a label devolves into a slur, it ceases to be a tool for understanding reality and becomes a weapon to
escape it. But what happens to a slur when the reaches of reality push against it? It depends on how deep we
want to look into our prejudice.
Naturally, these labels start to lose meaning. When faced with danger, people do not jump to analyse the
danger, they start finding ways to get out or fight the danger. Assumptions are birthed from this when we
replace labels' characteristics; the only thing that starts mattering is what an object with that label is
supposed to do next. Once we have reached that point, the brain can optimise further into what emotional
response we are supposed to have because of it. Once we can predict what emotional response we are supposed to
have, the brain can jump past the part of analysis and prediction of emotion and go straight into the
emotional impact, which makes part of a slur, but not full part of it.
Assumptions are not birthed in a vacuum, however. Stereotypes are part of us, from media, internalised
prejudice, and what is cherrypicked from the news that makes us create our own stereotypes. These sweeping,
general, and often disparaging ideas about groups, people and places makes the assumption-making capacity err,
which is why it had not developed into a slur, but still exist because stereotypes allow for the decision
making capacity to be overridden by stereotypes as they give enough emotional potency to allow the brain to
care more about the emotional payoff than the capacity to check the risk of that assumption being wrong.
This is a smaller synthesis of a longer thing I wrote, which you can find
here under the title 'Labels.' See you then!