[luckylion]

> These terms amongst hundreds of others build up a mental association between blackness and wrongness.

It would be easier to stop calling brown skin black than to make people not associate black with darkness, uncertainty and danger. Associating darkness (which is pretty much black) with death is much, much older than the US, believe it or not.

People aren't racist because they read about the Black Death and figure "yeah, I guess black people are evil, look what they did to Europe in the 14th century", and you won't make them less racist if you remove the word black from language.

[szemet]

To show a positive example, without word redefinitions: IMHO western society largely managed to end prejudice against left-handiness, while keeping the word "right".

(And this "left -> bad" or "right" -> good (or both) association is as (or more) prevalent in languages of the world as the "dark -> bad" association)

[ardy42]

> IMHO western society largely managed to end prejudice against left-handiness, while keeping the word "right".

To illustrate this: sinister means "on the left side" and "threatening or portending evil."