Prior to 2020, Websters dictionary defined racism as the superiority of one race over another.  In 2020, Kennedy Mitchum a student who had just graduated from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, didn’t think the definition went far enough. She wrote to the editors:

“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 in skin color.” She got a reply the next day. After several more exchanges, the editors agreed to make the change.   https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/dictionary-racism-definition-update-trnd/index.html

Summed up, it’s a definition that activists have been using all along: Racism is “prejudice plus power.”

Websters defines vulnerable as what “can be wounded or physically injured, open to criticism or attack (a vulnerable reputation); easily hurt, as by adverse criticism; sensitive.”  With that definition, who would WANT to be vulnerable? I believe – like racism – the definition of vulnerable is changing.

I recently did a “word dump where I took ten minutes and tried thinking of every word I could that came to mind when I thought of vulnerability.  This is what I came up with: weak, in danger of being hurt, brave, honest, truthful, fearful, small, messy, complicated, open-minded, scared and freeing.  I invite you to do the same and email me your list at .

I next looked at a thesaurus and discovered other words: helpless, unprotected, movable, persuadable, brittle, fragile, delicate, exposed and open are only a few. How do we understand a word so broad in scope? How do we define a word with so many differing synonyms?  Perhaps we should contact Websters dictionary with a new definition of the word!

That may be a little far-fetched, but I do think it is important for us to think about vulnerability and what it means for us in 2024. I hope you’ll spend some time examining it with me. And I’m waiting for your word-dump!