I wanted to chant “Chapin, and Brearley, and Spence, Oh My!” this morning as I read of the endless pages of social media created by the elite black alumnae of these long-standing educational institutions. One student said, “‘The school likes to make them seem that they are once in a blue moon or isolated incidents, which they aren’t,’ she said. ‘This points to a culture.’” There is no surprise here. This is what systemic racism means—permeating the system. The OED tells me that the roots of the word system mean, believe it or not, the universe. So, are we clear? Have we left anything out? When systemic is the adjective for anything, it means that whatever is permeating the system touches everything.

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You wouldn’t think that hair color had any real play in identity politics, but, in my case it does. I’m a redhead, born and raised. A real redhead. We had an extremely rude retreat guest one weekend at Cupcake Manor, and I said something about being a redhead. She responded instantly, “You’re not a redhead!” It ticks me off to this day. So you can imagine, I’m sure, how I felt about this little goodie in yesterday’s Times. “One of the country’s leading conservative legal organizations, the Alliance Defending Freedom, warned in a blog post to its supporters on Tuesday that a major piece of the decision—the recognition of gender identity as legally protected—‘creates chaos’ and could compel people ‘to refer to colleagues with pronouns and other sex-specific terms according to gender identity rather than biology.’” I honestly don’t think using someone’s preferred pronouns has ever killed anybody. Correct me if I’m wrong. And, alright, the pronoun thing, especially for we elders, among whom I count the over-50 crowd, can be treacherous, especially if those to whom they apply are impatient with our learning curve about it. But, honestly, no one ever died from having to stretch their use of pronouns, and, on the other side, plenty of people have died of being mis-pronouned.

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