The 'business community'

Abstract

The US may be populated by nearly 300 million isolated monads, but do we ever love the word 'community'. On the left, it's never 'blacks' or 'Jews', it's 'the black community' and 'the Jewish community'. Presumably there's something abrupt and almost impolite about simple monosyllabic nouns, so the addition of a few Latinate syllables softens the blow. But there's a way in which the use of the word reads like a wish fulfillment, a hope that a community that doesn't really exist in any for-itself sense can be created in the act of naming it. But, beyond the left, it's also a popular formulation in mainstream American speech. Examples I've collected over the years include the reality TV community, the military community, the air-hijacking community, the mortgage community, the Alzheimer's community, the cybernerd community, the Phish community, and the copyright community. Of particular interest to readers of this volume might be one of the more ubiquitous examples: 'the business community'.