Why Did Xenophobia Become Dictionary.com’s 2016 Word of the Year?

The 2015 Word of the Year was “identity”. This year, it’s “xenophobia”. Do you sense a pattern?

2016 was really one of the worst years we had on record. No, really– think about it. In fact, the guys over at Spotify seemed so shaken up, they released a series of billboards saying “Thanks, 2016. It’s been weird,” in over 14 markets– their biggest global campaign ever.

Dictionary.com’s 2016 Word of the Year really hits the nail on its head describing the year. It’s “xenophobia” and it’s usage and search for it increased drastically during two key events: President Donal Trump’s winning campaign in the US and the UK leaving the European Union.

But what is it, and how did it manifest across the world in 2016?

What is Xenophobia?

The word comes from the Greek words, xénos meaning “stranger, guest,” and phóbos meaning “fear” or “aversion.” The word’s earliest use has been commonly attributed to the author Anatole France in a 1901 novel and is thus said to have French origins.

Is Xenophobia a Disorder Like Any Other Phobia?

Psychologists don’t like it much, truth be told. They prefer using words like prejudice or ethnocentrism to define this fear of strangers. The consider xenophobia to be a consequence of a deliberate action, and not a phobia.

Xenophobia is mostly used by social scientists, media, political actors and commentators and now, liberal netizens during social media conversations. Unfortunately, they don’t stay true to the word’s roots.

In the last few years, xenophobia has come to mean a hatred of immigrants and ethnic minorities instead of a fear of strangers. In 2016, as Dictionary.com’s selection suggests:

[...] Some of the most prominent news stories have centered around fear of the Other. Fear is an adaptive part of human evolutionary history and often influences behaviours and perceptions on a subconscious level. However, this particular year saw fear rise to the surface of cultural discourse. 

What Happened in 2016 to Warrant Such a Trend?

What didn’t happen in 2016?

The UK...Left the EU

The largest spike in look-ups for xenophobia was recorded on 24 June, with a 938% increase. What happened on 24 June 2016, you ask? Not much, except the United Kingdom held a referendum and voted to exit the European Union– a relationship of more than four decades. The ‘Leave Campaign’ was mainly fuelled by rising hatred towards immigrants, half of whom came from other EU states to study, work and live.

Since then, there has been a clear rise in the number of xenophobic attacks in the UK– the police have reported a 41% increase in the number of hate crimes, especially against Muslims.

Donald Trump Runs for President of USA

The next big surge in word searches came on 30 June when President Barack Obama, while campaigning for Hillary Clinton during the US presidential elections, said of then candidate, now President-elect, Donald Trump’s political rhetoric:

[It’s] nativism. Or xenophobia. Or worse.

He was right.

Currently President of the United States of America, Donald Trump’s entire campaign was based on ‘divide and conquer’. He called Mexican immigrants drug smugglers and “rapists”, supported a Muslim registry, promised hardline anti-immigration policy and often refers to black people and Latinos as “the African-Americans” and “the Latinos”, a key way of Othering a racial group from one’s own.

Gun Violence in the US

Gun violence was a pressing concern in 2016, with 565 people having been killed and 1,856 people wounded in mass shooting incidents in the US. This number peaked in June 2016, in an act of homophobia, Omar Mateen shot and killed 50 people and wounded 53 more at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Racially-targeted police shootings have killed 263 black people in the US, with reports confirming 69% of the victims were unarmed at the time of death. In July 2016, the New York Police Department made news when a black police officer went to the press with details of arrest quotas. The police were instructed to complete ‘quotas’ for low-level crimes by senior officials, especially in areas with Hispanics, black people or the poor since they had “less chances of fighting back.”

What Are Some Other Words That Came Up in Our Discourse in 2016?

Donald Trump’s campaign tapped into the fear of the Other, which is at the very heart of xenophobia and violently amplified it. This can be seen by the entrance of words such as alt-right, post-truth, and even Black Lives Matter in our discourse.

'Fascism' is still our #1 lookup.

# of lookups = how we choose our Word of the Year.

There's still time to look something else up.

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) November 29, 2016

Trump was endorsed by Neo-Nazis throughout his campaign and- in a chilling reminder of the worst manifestation of xenophobia in recorded history, the Holocaust- saluted his victory with cries of “Hail Trump”.

How Did Xenophobia Manifest in India in 2016?

India’s independence in 1947 was at the helm of one of the bloodiest partitions and casused a mass exodus of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims, to and from Pakistan. This Islamophobia has always been a part of our public consciousness, exploding in bursts of communal riots in the last six decades.

With the Pathankot and Uri attacks carried out by Pakistani terrorists on Indian army bases, and India’s retaliatory surgical strikes, 2016 saw this xenophobia flare up once again. Any one who dared to argue with or question this ‘anti-Pakistan’ public sentiment was labelled a Pakistani and promptly asked to move to the other side of the border with the likes of Fawad Khan.

In a way, xenophobia and islamophobia lie at the root of the current mood of heightened nationalism in the country: whether it is the continuing existence of the sedition law or the social media rhetoric of “go back to Pakistan” reaching a fever pitch.

@ashabhosle Yes Muslim presstitutes & traitors like you are called kutte & kamine in decent language, go back to gutter Pakistan

— Being Human (@bhkparx) September 30, 2016

Homophobia, or xenophobia involving homosexuals or (loosely) members of the LGBTQ community also trumped (!) in 2016, with the Supreme Court staying a 2009 High Court verdict decriminalising homosexuality– and not having ruled on it still. 

2016 also saw incidents of racism against Africans living in India, with as many as seven black people getting attacked in the month of May itself. Kenneth Ignibosa, a Nigerian priest, was attacked while in his car by 15 men, wielding bats, yelling “you leave our country, you Africans.”