This newspaper is not exempt from that critique.

And specifically, by leaving people of color out on a limb as the primary voices of truth on these racial issues, you have created the impression that the use of these terms is born of personal grievance rather than professional assessment.

By refusing to add your white voices you gave the defining of racism a black face. You allowed people to believe that the telling of truth and bearing of witness by some, we black and brown few, has the appearance of being corrupted and compromised by ignoble motive.

A USA Today/Ipsos poll published on July 17 found that more than twice as many Americans believe that people who call others racist do so “in bad faith,” compared with those who do not believe it.

Image Credit... The New York Times

This all contributes to whittling away at the reality of racism itself, that it even exists in nearly the proportions which social scientists have documented. This refusal to properly and consistently call racism racism allows the pro-racists and the racism deniers to proclaim nearly unopposed that labeling something or someone racist has simply become a weapon, and that the words themselves have lost meaning by overuse.

In truth, the opposite is true: Racism is actually under-identified and labeled in America.

And, I believe that too many of our white neighbors are choosing to be intentionally blind to the enormous breadth and scope of racism in this country, because to acknowledge it would be to condemn self, family, friends and community. It would be to recognize that much of their existence is privileged, and conversely blackness is oppressed.

Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress and the first to seek a major party nomination for president, once put it: “Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.”