Merriam-Webster updated its dictionary definition of racism after an email exchange with a woman who was sick of white people using the dictionary during debates.
Kennedy Mitchum, 22, sent Merriam-Webster editors an email about the definition on May 28, reported The New York Times.
She requested an updated definition that addresses the institutional aspects of racism.
“Racism is not only prejudice against a certain race due to the color of a person’s skin, as it states in your dictionary,” she wrote.
The original definition defined racism as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
