Merriam-Webster to revise racism definition after woman’s campaign; The Guardian, June 11, 2020

Poppy Noor, The Guardian; Merriam-Webster to revise racism definition after woman’s campaign

Kennedy Mitchum, who asked dictionary to update definition, said racism is ‘prejudice combined with social and institutional power’

"Editors at Merriam-Webster confirmed on Wednesday that they will revise the word’s definition after a campaign by a 22-year-old Drake University graduate, Kennedy Mitchum.

Mitchum wrote to the dictionary asking it to update its definition. She said that people often use the dictionary definition of racism to argue that something is not racist, on the basis that racism requires a personal dislike of someone based on their race to be real.

In an email to Merriam-Webster, Mitchum wrote: “Racism is not only prejudice against a certain race due to the color of a person’s skin, as it states in your dictionary,. It is both prejudice combined with social and institutional power. It is a system of advantage based on skin color.”

The definition, which incorporates the idea that prejudice alone is not racism (rather, racism requires a system of institutional power behind it in order to function) was put forward by the sociologist Patricia Bidol in the 1970s."