"I look at the word"

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, let us commemorate and recognize going forward the danger of "diverting people of their humanity" in the words of Maya Angelou.

We need her words. Maya Angelou creates imagery with every word, teaching us its capability to corrode a life to its core. With power comes responsibility, which goes for words as for imagery:

"I look at the word

created to divert people of their humanity

We must be careful

Careful of calling people out of their names

Using racist pejoratives and sexual pejoratives

and all that ignorance"

"I believe that the word is a thing

It is non-visible

and audible only for the time it is there

It hangs in the air

But I believe it is a thing

I believe it goes into the upholstery

and then in the wall-paper

and into my hair

into my clothes

Finally into my body

I believe that words are things

and I live on them
Someday we will be able to measure the power of words"