Photo by cmoaknd

After finishing up a post yesterday on the District’s HPV vaccine, I tweeted out a simple message to DCist’s followers: “D.C. is one of two states to mandate the HPV vaccine. How many students get it? Very few.”

It wasn’t but a few minutes before the responses started flowing in, all of them pointing to one undeniable fact: the District isn’t a state. That’s true, and my use of the term “state” was incorrect.

Maybe the decision to use the term was subconsciously stylistic: sometimes it’s simply easier to refer to the District as a state than a city, place, jurisdiction, colony, or federal enclave. Had I not lumped the District in with the 50 states in my tweet yesterday, it would likely have read: “D.C. is only federal enclave to mandate HPV vaccine; Virginia, a state, also does.” Not so sexy.

Or maybe I’m trying to claim a designation for the District that carries with it the very rights that residents have been denied for so long. As a District resident, I’m constantly impressed by how much people seek to dismiss our rightful claims for self-determination and voting rights simply because of a technical title that we lack. (It’s surely not our size, seeing as the District has more people than some of the 50 states.) We’re always reminded that we’re not entitled to congressional representation because the Constitution sets it aside for the “states.” Our local legislation and budgets are scrubbed by Congress because, as they often tell us, we’re little more than a federal city. It’s as if we’re all lesser Americans because we’re not the State of New Columbia, a name that was proposed by the statehood movement in the 1980s. (And if we want to be really picky, it should be the 46 states and four commonwealths, right?)

This ties into something else I noticed earlier this year while reading a New York Times editorial advocating for local autonomy — we’re often referred to as a little-d District. (For example: “The district’s hard-won home rule…”) This isn’t just a Gray Lady habit, though. The AP Style Guide says that “the district, rather than D.C., should be used in subsequent references” when writing about local, not federal, issues.

I’d accept this if we were simply a random congressional district. Or a school district. But we’re not. The city is formally known as the District of Columbia, a title the city gained in 1871. New York City officials can be referred to as “city officials” because they can alternatively be called “New York officials.” We can’t. Writers, editors and residents have long gone to pains to distinguish between “Washington” and “D.C.,” and we can only really be called the “District” in shorthand, not “Columbia.” Giving us the little-d treatment not only seems to diminish that fact, but also subconsciously plays into the perception that, as I mentioned above, we’re somewhat lesser than everyone else because we’re not a state. (Local newspapers go for the big-D, indicating that they at least get the distinction.)

Am I being picky here? Sure. But language carries political and social weight, and sometimes groups work to reclaim words that were once used against them (it’s called “reappropriation“) or claim titles that they’ve long been denied. We’ve never been known as a state, and I’ll be careful with how I use it from now on. But if it slips in, understand that maybe it’s a stylistic choice, or possibly I’m just really pissed off about not having statehood on that particular day. Appropriating the term could well be a linguistic form of protest against a denial of rights that isn’t merely unconscionable, but in many ways un-American.

As for the District, we’ll always refer to ourselves in the big-D sort of way, because that’s what we are.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you’ve got a quibble or question.