Webster Racism: How Much Can Definitions Actually Define?

"If I look up “carrot” in the dictionary, most people will acknowledge I do not know all there is to know about carrots and if I truly want to understand carrots, I should probably pick up a horticultural text book. We know that legal and medical terms are going to be, at best, simplistically represented and know we need to find a lawyer or a doctor if we want to know more. Anyone deciding to base their argument on, say, a philosophical concept or term using the dictionary is going to be laughed at at best, or automatically lose whatever argument they’re trying to make at least. Yet the minute we move into a social justice framework, the ultimate authority changes. We don’t need lived experience, we don’t need experts who have examined centuries of social disparities and discrimination, we don’t need societal context. We don’t need sociology or history – no, we have THE DICTIONARY! That ultimate tome of oracular insight, the last word on any debate!"

This excerpt from the social commentary blog, Womanist Musings, has beautifully articulated my frustrations with the dictionary. Too often, usually in discussions with uncomfortable white people, I have had the dictionary pulled out on me and some lofty definition of racism or sexism read to me. These definitions are usually correct, yes. But they offer no context. Racism and sexism and other -isms are reduced down from catastrophic, institutional principles to a general, euphemistic meaning which was intended to be used to simply define a word; not to explain it and not to apply it.  As the Womanist Musings post elaborated, "the dictionary is not an ultimate authority. It’s a brief answer, a vague idea, as concise as it can be to get the idea across."

There are certain things about words, racism in particular, the dictionary just can't tell you. It won't mention slavery, economic apartheid, Jim Crow, the Black Panther Party, colorism, segregation, assassinations, the KKK, lynchings, Adolf Hitler, church bombings, Trayvon Martin, mass incarceration, the Dred Scott case, COINTELPRO, gentrification, white supremacy, etc., etc., etc.

So if you want to talk to me about how racism doesn't exist anymore, or how reverse racism is real, or how racism exists only in the backwoods of Alabama and not in every American institution, please have a statement that does not  depend on the two sentences found beside the word.

Webster racism doesn't even scratch the surface, let alone hold any standing as a valid argument.