Manufacturers Worry about Losing Market Share to Shovels and Brooms
Don Imus may be history, but garden tool manufacturers are embroiled in a controversy about the name of a common implement that has been in widespread use since humans first began cultivating plants.
The tool is the hoe, a metal scraper with a long handle generally used to move small amounts of earth around plants and to chop weeds. The word “hoe” when spelled by dropping the letter “e” but pronounced the same is a racially-charged term describing women in an offensive and denigrating manner.
Should the hoe be called something else? And if the name were changed to, say, “lose soil dragger”, would it be alright if some African Americans continued to call it a “hoe” while others would be forbidden to use the name because to do so would be racist behavior?
“There’s no question that what to call the hoe going forward is a significant issue as we work our way through a national dialog about race and language in the wake of the Don Imus affair,” said Melinda Wilson, a prominent New York civil rights attorney and law professor. “My personal view, if I were giving them advice, would be that hoe manufacturers should play it safe and find a new, neutral name for the tool.”
She said a new name would make it possible for gardeners and the horticulture industry in general to talk to one another and not have to worry about whether they were saying racially offensive things. “Think about how difficult it would be at a place like Home Depot if they wanted to advertise their ‘blow-out hoe sale.’”
When the Imus controversy was in full bloom and before CBS fired the shock jock for his racially offensive description of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, The National Association of Hoe Manufacturers said its board of directors planned to change the name of the hoe. A spokesman said that “dirt dragger” and “loose soil puller” were the favorite alternative names.
But Executive Director Foster Clodman apparently spoke before all members of the board had weighed in on the issue. The board backtracked and Clodman now says a name change for the hoe “is under careful consideration.”
A source familiar with the NAHM board’s deliberations said the group doesn’t want to give up a simple, single-syllable name that has universal recognition among consumers.
“The multiple-syllabicism of a name like ‘loose soil puller’ would be the kiss of death in terms of product recognition in the market place,” the source said. “Hoes would be at risk of serious loss of market share to shovels, scoops, spades, brooms and even chainsaws.”
In the search for a simple, single-syllable name, the NAHM has gone back to the hoe’s ancient origins, which are believed to be the French word “houe” and the Germanic “haue”.
“The problem with ‘houe” is that it might be confused with the word ‘house’ in many consumers’ minds and we would lose sales, no question about that,” the board source said. “And ‘haue’ could be seen as just one of Madison Avenue’s invented nonsense words.
“It’s hard to see an easy way out of this mess,” the source said. “What a shame that Imus got everything so stirred up.”