189 year old US dictionary Merriam-Webster will update the meaning of the word “racism” after being contacted by an African American woman from Missouri.
Kennedy Mitchum, a recent graduate of Drake University in Iowa, said that the current definition fell short of including the systemic oppression of people of colour, according to media reports.
“A revision to the entry for racism is now being drafted to be added to the dictionary soon, and we are also planning to revise the entries of other words that are related to racism or have racial connotations,” a statement of the dictionary shared by Ms. Mitchum on Facebook said.
Mitchum, 22, emailed the dictionary last month, following the death of African American George Floyd in the custody of four Minneapolis police officers, Xinhua news agency reported.
“I kept having to tell them that definition is not representative of what is actually happening in the world,” Mitchum told CNN. “The way that racism occurs in real life is not just prejudice, it’s the systemic racism that is happening for a lot of black Americans.”
Merriam-Webster’s first definition of racism is “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.”
“It’s not just disliking someone because of their race,” Mitchum wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. “This current fight we are in is evidence of that, lives are at stake because of the systems of oppression that go hand-in-hand with racism.”
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