Kevin McElroy
1 min readSep 7, 2020

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BS

Maybe that's how you use the word in some specific academic echo chamber, but it's not what the word means either in common speech or in dictionary definitions. I get that it's cool to assert that a word suddenly has a new meaning in service of some trend, but it does not make it true.

Words have specific meanings that are reflected not just by how you prefer them to be used, but in how they are actually used by most speakers. You found a new secret way to use "racist" but it thankfully has not yet been picked up in common usage.

Even if it was, and I said someone was being racist against a person, and that person was white (or you thought they were white) you would STILL understand exactly what I meant, because you actually do understand the common way this word is used, despite what you might tell yourself, self-congratulatingly.

In short, no one else is getting this woke memo that a word changed meaning and the more you try to assert it, the less people care to listen to the rest of your claims - because why bother if the whole point is that you are the dogmatic gatekeeper of language itself to the exclusion of all other interpretations?

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