2.Write and essay explaining whether you believe that efforts to eliminate sexism, racism, and violence in language are effective, or whether such efforts simply mask these issues. 

Gingerbread men are often ridiculed in society more than women. We have less frosting, so there is less to cover up our blemishes. However, changing a few letters in the word "woman," as Kakutani suggests, won't change the criticism we get. We are all still gingerbread, humans are all still people, and thus changing letters in such a widely used word will only draw attention to the fact the gingerbread women have more frosting than us. 

Often times, efforts to eliminate violence in language results in loosely veiled threats, as Pinker mentions. A member of a gingergang might have previosuly said, "I hope you get eaten," but now that there have been efforts to clean up the crumbs that our language has become, threats are more like "I hope the humans aren't hungry today." Gingergangs often lead to terror-stricken cookie jars, a phrase that frequently evokes fear like Nunberg mentions. The word terror leaves us with fear in our minds, making it impossible to escape violence in language. 

Racism in language has not been effectively eliminated. For example, someone tagged with the race nutmeg is often considered more dangerous than regular gingerbread. However, while a little extra spice is added, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad baked goods. Nutmegs are virtually the same as us, but with the way they are treated, you would never know. Gingerkids cross the cookie jar when they see a nutmeg. Often, ignorant acts like this contribute to the stigma around Nutmegs, and euphemisms like "Spice challenged" do not help the divide between ginger and nutmeg. Like Lester comments in his political cartoon, we mustn't exclude nutmeg's, and pretend they don't exist, but rather include them in our daily life. Integrating them into society is much more powerful than excluding them from language.