Roomies, we are creating change, even when it comes to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary. According to The New York Times, a Black woman, 22-year-old Kennedy Mitchum and a recent college graduate, was persistent in her challenge to revise the word ‘racism,’ and the powers that be have agreed.
Amid the George Floyd protests, in late May, Mitchum wrote to Merriam-Webster and stated, “Racism is not only prejudice against a certain race due to the color of a person’s skin, as it states in your dictionary,” she wrote. “It is both prejudice combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based on skin color.” Peter Sokolowski, an editor at large at Merriam-Webster, stated the definition hasn’t been revised in decades and that the editors were currently working on a revision.
“This entry has not been revised in decades,” he said, adding that it was not a new division of the word’s meanings, “but an improvement of the wording.”
So, right now, the Merriam-Webster definition of racism is pretty much based on judgement formed by prejudices but fails to reflect the systemic racism that puts Black people and others of colors at a disadvantage, due to lack of power.
a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principle; a political or social system founded on racism
racial prejudice or discrimination
This was important to Mitchum because when discussing racism with white people, they would copy and paste the current definition, according to The New York Times.
As Black and other people of color know, there is a lot more to racism than what the definition suggests.
Luckily, those at Merriam-Webster are revising the entry. Thank God for a Black woman leading the charge.
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