Trigger Words: How Political Language Has Made America Less Inclusive (and How to Bring Us Back Together)

About the Book

Trigger Words examines how language in the United States has been manipulated and politicized to sow division and dehumanization, rather than to encourage inclusion and equity. From "woke" to "DEI" to "CRT," words that once emerged from marginalized communities to speak truth to power have been weaponized by conservative movements--especially the MAGA wing of the Republican Party--to stoke fear, shut down dialogue, and preserve systems of oppression. At the same time, however, language has been coopted by many in liberal spaces in watered-down ways that remove the overall message that was intended to be communicated by said language, such as switching terminology from "homeless" to "unhoused," "African American" to "BIPOC," or "Latino" to "Latinx."

This incisive and thoughtful look at how our language has been dangerously politicized by both sides of the aisle is not just a diagnosis--it is a roadmap. With experience as a university lecturer, community activist, award-winning poet, renowned professional speaker, and author (Lies About Black People), Dr. Omekongo Dibinga charts a path forward to reclaim and reframe these terms in their original contexts and intent.

Trigger Words is an urgent and hopeful call to action that shows that healing begins when we stop simply repeating these words like ideological mantras or rejecting them out of political fear. Instead, the book invites readers to understand the deeper histories behind our most loaded social vocabulary, challenge manipulation and misuse, and foster authentic dialogue that connects rather than divides.

About the Author :
Dr. Omékongo Dibinga has devoted his life to challenging bias and smashing stereotypes for over thirty years since first getting involved as a community activist. Dr. Dibinga is Senior Professorial Lecturer of Intercultural Communication at American University. He is an award-winning poet and a world-renowned professional speaker working with corporations and school districts across the world on leveraging diversity. His undergraduate and doctoral work has centered around issues facing disenfranchised communities not only in America but across the globe, which has led him to live and work in almost thirty countries. Dr. Dibinga earned his Ph.D. in international education policy at the University of Maryland, where his dissertation centered on post-Civil Rights-era Black youth. He also worked with the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Diverse Students Initiative and provides leadership, educational, and diversity empowerment as a consultant and motivational speaker for organizations, associations, and institutions around the world. He lives in Maryland.

Review :
"Trigger Words is a vital intervention against the intentional use of language to stall our collective progress. For too long, weaponized language has divided us, but Dibinga offers the historical context needed to move past such strategies. By providing a roadmap for authentic and healing dialogue, he empowers us to begin the heavy work of reconstruction through the words we reclaim."--Anna Malaika Tubbs, New York Times bestselling author of The Three Mothers and Erased "Omekongo Dibinga's Trigger Words is a masterly unmasking of the emotions, intentions, and significations of highly charged words and their meanings in our society. He brilliantly provokes readers to ask 'who's triggering who' as he invites each of us to examine our biases, phobias, prejudices, fears, and paranoia as we negotiate the quagmire of contemporary culture. With this book, Dibinga emerges as one of the nation's leading public intellectuals." --Michael Eric Dyson, author of Entertaining Race