A brief history of the term, "social distancing."

Like so many catch phrases in common American parlance, “social distancing” has its roots in elitism and by inevitable extension, racism. The term first appeared in late nineteenth century English newspapers as a means of describing the degrees to which people would countenance exposure to persons of lower ilk. It was a detached and dispassionate expression whose utterer patted himself on the back by choosing it, in his estimation graciously avoiding less charitable descriptions of the subjacent classes. 

It was especially employed in Romeo and Juliet marriages, unions objected to over history, ethnicity, wealth or any of the other many enemies of love. “Social distancing” also became an early 20^th century euphemism for segregation, used by American newspapers wishing to ease northeast liberals’ cognitive dissonance about living in an apartheid state. 

This usage was ideal for the roaring ‘20s, whose blameless separatism was its very character. Indeed, in 1925, “social distancing” graduated from watered-down genteel racism to legitimate science with the introduction of the Social Distance Scale, a tool developed by sociologist Emory S. Bogardus, that measures people’s relative discomfort with other people across marriage, friendship, employment, nationalism and other categories.

Social distancing as a tool to fight pandemics is a 21^st century innovation. Much credit can be claimed by the George W. Bush administration for reacting to the SARS pandemic of 2004 with an open-mindedness to the idea of social distancing as a potentially effective means of mitigating its spread. It was the weapon used by medieval civilizations and our own in 1918, but the prevailing medical opinion at the time was that it was impractical in a modern world and in the end, largely ineffective. This has since been proven untrue. In an essential research paper on the matter published in 2005, Targeted Social Distancing Designs for Pandemic Influenza, Robert J. Glass’ interdisciplinary team concluded that, “targeted social distancing strategies can be designed to effectively mitigate the local progression of pandemic influenza without the use of vaccine or antiviral drugs.”

By 2004, the CDC was using “social distancing” to describe the minimization of human contact across society. The current push from the CDC is to replace that usage with “physical distancing,” which not only more accurately describes the strategy, it is absent the racist, elitist, nationalist baggage of its parentage. University of Chicago doctoral candidate Lily Scherlis has made a small splash in the word-nerd world with her research on the term, and for the deep dive, she is your go-to. 

Her research pegs a first English usage in 1831 in a letter written by a friend of Napoleon Bonaparte. As Napoleon won more battles, conquered more territory and became more and more lauded in French society, Nap’s old buddy lamented a growing sense of apartness between the two men, a phenomenon he described as “social distancing.” The phrase has had quite a journey. It began with the loss of a friend, found its way into the gritted teeth of embittered snobs and racists who might have preferred “bums” and the “N” word, next into social science laboratories, and lastly into the mouths of epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists and every English-speaking person who breathes air and wonders how in the hell we let this happen.