You’re Probably Not Racist.

But like the rest of us, you might be confused

You might not have noticed, but over the last few years, there’s been a quiet war raging against the English language. As far as I’ve been able to work out, the enemy is any word that has a clear, unambiguous meaning.

Notable casualties of this war currently include the word “Literally”, which can now officially be used to mean figuratively. “Gender”, which…nobody is quite sure about the meaning of anymore. And “Racist”, which is now used to describe, well, everybody.

Actually, scratch that. Racist now describes everybody who’s white. If this strikes you as a racist thing to say, that’s either because you’re still operating from the old definition or because you’re white and your fragility is showing. The new definition of racism removes the need to think or talk or empathise by simply grouping everybody whose skin is a certain colour and judging them collectively based on that one characteristic.

White people benefit from — and are therefore responsible for — every aspect of a society which was designed to oppress everybody else. They are descended from — and are therefore responsible for — people who owned slaves and stole land from people of colour. And given the well-established fact that an individual’s bigotry and ignorance is indelibly…