How Has The Definition Of Race Changed Over Time

BEN ZIMMER
SEPTEMBER iv, 2020

racism A close expect at how Merriam-Webster's definition of racism has evolved over fourth dimension reveals a complex narrative. PETER SOKOLOWSKI / MERRIAM-WEBSTER INC.; WEBSTER'South NEW INTERNATIONAL Lexicon OF THE English LANGUAGE, SECOND EDITION, UNABRIDGED / THE ATLANTIC

In June, as Black Lives Thing protests were in full swing later on the expiry of George Floyd at the easily of Minneapolis police, a dictionary definition made headlines. The definition that drew so much attention was the one that Merriam-Webster gave for the word racism. The news was that the lexicon publisher was going to be revising its entry for the term after hearing from a young Black activist from Missouri, Kennedy Mitchum.

Mitchum had contacted Merriam-Webster considering she was dissatisfied with what she found when she looked up racism in the lexicon'due south online portal. The first definition given for racism was "a belief that race is the chief determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race." Equally she told CNN at the time, "The way that racism occurs in real life is not simply prejudice. It's the systemic racism that is happening for a lot of Black Americans."

The idea that racism could be systemic, and not just a thing of personal prejudice, was actually conveyed in the second definition given byMerriam-Webster: "a doctrine or political program based on the assumption of racism and designed to execute its principles" or "a political or social system founded on racism." Nonetheless, asMerriam-Webster'due south editor at large, Peter Sokolowski, explained, "the thought of an asymmetrical ability construction" could be expressed more than conspicuously, so the entry was revisited to bring that sense to the fore.

Now the revised entry forracism has finally arrived, included in the online updateMerriam-Websterpublished yesterday. Equally promised, the entry underscores some nuances, though the revision is not a complete rewrite. As before, the first definition given relates to personal belief and attitudes. Only the revised 2nd definition—"the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another; specifically: white supremacy"—ameliorate highlights what Mitchum was looking for. Additionally, the entry is now enriched by illustrative quotations from such writers as Angela Y. Davis, bell hooks, Mariana Calvo, and Imani Perry, and the activist Bree Newsome.

When Mitchum'south appeal toMerriam-Webster attracted news coverage in June, many commentators portrayed the story in broad strokes every bit "the lexicon gets woke." Depending on i's political perspective, that might be seen equally either a laudable footstep in the path to progressive enlightenment or as a capitulation to the forces of political correctness. But a closer look at howMerriam-Webster's definition ofracism has evolved over time reveals a much more than complex narrative.

Racism andracist are surprisingly recent additions to the English language lexicon. You won't find those words in the writings of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, or Abraham Lincoln. While theOxford English Dictionarycurrently datesracism in English language to 1903 andracist to 1919, the terms were still rarely used in the early decades of the 20th century. The pioneering ceremonious-rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells, for instance, instead used phrases likerace hatred andrace prejudice in her memoir,Crusade for Justice, which she began writing in 1928 but left unfinished when she died three years later.

WhenMerriam-Webster published the second edition of its unabridgedNew International Dictionary, in 1934,racism was nowhere to be found. The editors did include another, related term, which was more pop at the time:racialism, defined as "racial characteristics, tendencies, prejudices, or the similar; spec., race hatred." Butracismwas not nonetheless on the radar of the lexicographers diligently at work atMerriam-Webster'due south Springfield, Massachusetts, function.

That all changed thank you to a perceptive observation by 1 member of the editorial staff named Rose Frances Egan. Egan, a graduate of Syracuse and Columbia who studied the history of aesthetics, came on board equally an assistant editor for the second edition of theNew International Dictionary. She was also tasked with writing entries forWebster'southward Dictionary of Synonyms, which she worked on for several years before its commencement edition was published in 1942.

A handwritten slip tucked away inMerriam-Webster'due south annal tells the story. (Earlier the advent of e-mail, interoffice communication among the editors in Springfield would typically be carried out by exchanging notes on pink slips of paper, still known affectionately equally "the pinks.") This detail sideslip, dated Nov 1, 1938, was written by Egan, who asked a boyfriend editor, John P. Bethel, almost the condition of the wordracism. "Has this term been entered in the addenda?" Egan asked Bethel. "I wanted to employ information technology in a ds. and find that it is not in W. '34."

racism 2 Egan's note to Bethel on November 1, 1938 (Peter Sokolowski / Merriam-Webster Inc.)

John Morse, a former president and publisher atMerriam-Webster, guided me through the obscure in-house notations on the slip with the eagerness of an Egyptologist deciphering the Rosetta Stone. Egan knew that there was noracism entry in the 1934Webster's New International but was inquiring whether information technology was slated for hereafter printings as function of the Addenda, the section in the front of the dictionary for new words that came to the editors' attention as well tardily for inclusion in the main text. When Egan said she wanted to apply it in a "ds.," that was short fordiscriminated synonym, the term of art for the items considered in the entries of theDictionary of Synonyms that Egan was hard at work drafting. Any word used in a secondary piece of work like the synonym dictionary, co-ordinate toMerriam-Webster policy, should also exist found in the flagship unabridged dictionary.

Sure enough, when theDictionary of Synonymswas starting time published a few years after, it included an entry with the wordracismin it. A paragraph teasing autonomously the differences between the wordsdenizen,subject, andnational included this sentence: "In that location is also a tendency to prefernational tobailiwick orcitizen in some countries where the sovereign power is not clearly vested in a monarch or ruler or in the people, or where theories of racism prevail."

Egan likely had in mind Nazi Deutschland's anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws, passed in 1935, which stripped Jews of their citizenship while they remained subjects of the Reich. Indeed, when the wordracism appeared in print in the late 1930s (still vying withracialism as the preferred term), it was most frequently in the context of European fascism under Hitler and Mussolini, with one definition drafted past theMerriam-Webster editors referring to "totalitarian credo" and another to "the Nazi supposition of Teutonic superiority and attendant anti-Semitism." Simply a week after Egan made her inquiry aboutracism in 1938, German Jews were viciously attacked in the Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht, the Dark of Broken Drinking glass.

racism 3 Webster'southward New International Dictionary of the English Linguistic communication, 2d Edition, Unabridged)

A few weeks later, the activist Jesuit priest Father John LaFarge Jr. spoke out against racism (paper accounts at the time gave the notwithstanding-novel term scare quotes), alarm that the destructive forces of racism were gaining footing not merely in Europe just in the Usa as well. Speaking at a dinner sponsored by the Catholic Interracial Council, LaFarge explicitly called out American racism against "Negroes, foreigners, and Jews." Even if most Americans were unfamiliar with the discussionracism being practical to American life, doctrines of white supremacy in the state were, of course, widespread and pernicious at the time. Racist tracts such as Madison Grant'sThe Passing of the Slap-up Race (1916) provided cover for segregation and anti-immigration laws in the U.S., and indeed served as inspiration to Hitler for the Nazis' own racist policies.

When the entry was finally printed in the unabridged lexicon's 1939 Addenda, the Nazi references were removed; the definition instead spoke more broadly of an "supposition of inherent racial superiority or the purity and superiority of certain races, and consequent discrimination confronting other races." Still, American readers consulting that dictionary entry would have immediately idea of the Nazi regime, and non necessarily homegrown racism of the kind Father LaFarge was warning about. But over fourth dimension,Merriam-Webster'south definition ofracism was farther de-Nazified, as postwar Americans became cognizant of racial injustices against Black people and other marginalized groups on the home front.

Egan's realization in 1938 thatracism was missing fromMerriam-Webster'due south dictionaries was, as Morse puts it, proof of her slap-up "lexicographical self-sensation." "This was at a time when the word was condign natural to use, just a flag went upwards: Is information technology in the dictionary?" Morse told me. "Information technology's a peachy 'aha' moment in the history of the English linguistic communication, and we should celebrate Rose Egan for it."

And whileMerriam-Webster's entry forracism was no doubt in need of a change when Kennedy Mitchum accordingly called it out before this summer, the lexicon's efforts to grapple with the term, ever since Egan first noticed it was in need of defining, are worth considering. When theracism entry came due for an overhaul in the third edition of theNew International in 1961, for instance, Editor in Chief Philip B. Gove and his staff adamant thatracism, past then no longer so associated with Nazi ideology, primarily referred to personal behavior about racial superiority. Merely they fabricated room for a second sense allowing thatracismcould also relate to institutional forces embedding implicit discrimination more than broadly in gild. And a third numbered sense divers it more succinctly as "racial prejudice or discrimination." In fact, it was this 1961 definition that Mitchum would accept seen when she consultedMerriam-Webster's online lexicon in June.

he legacy of by editions meant that the entry was and so broadly construed that it did not seem particularly applicable to systemic racism equally experienced by Black Americans. Laying out the semantics of the word has always been a balancing human activity between what scholars on race like Camara Phyllis Jones have identified as "institutionalized" racism on the one manus and "personally mediated" or "internalized" racism on the other. With the institutionalized side of racism coming to the fore in the electric current discourse, dictionaries demand to reflect that change of emphasis. Definitions are never set in stone, and the twists and turns of howracism has been divers illustrate how the meanings of such contentious terms are always field of study to reevaluation and contestation.

Last Updated: Sep 22, 2020 @ 7:13 pm