Indeed there's racism in many forms, shapes, and sizes. At what point should it be addressed, and where? I am certainly no expert here. What I observe in society when it comes to cultural change in general is that often a change is set in by a particular group who trigger a kind of overreaction on the theme by their activism, which in turn leads to severe resistance by others, followed by some 'middle road' becoming the new cultural norm over time. This can take many years.
You saw that with feminism, where at some point many fierce feminists held quite extreme views on the desired role of men in society. The vanguard opened the way, and then during many years feminist ideas started to permeate into every day society. On racism, Black Pete the helper of Saint Nicholas in a yearly children's festivity in the Netherlands, is an example where initially practically no one thought it racist. Until it was made a theme by activists. Now a couple years later about 3 quarters of the country see soot-faced Pete's (from the chimney through which they dispatch gifts), while a third clings to tradition with black face Pete and the argument "it isn't racist, and never was".
Where does it end?
My friend's brother got fired for saying something at work, except HR would not tell him what it was he said. Instead, they gave him a pamphlet filled with "problematic" phrases and suggested alternatives; it was many pages and may or may not have even contained his particular unsanctioned phrase. Who knows.
Included in the pamphlet were phrases such as (with minimal paraphrasing) "that falls on deaf ears", which offends the deaf community, "this is a blind spot", which offends blind people, "we're coming up short on that", which offends short people, "that's a tall order", which offends tall people, and more.
I'm really hard pressed to accept that on the off chance someone gets upset about their height because someone uses distance or length to compare two concepts in a work meeting, that it should be anyone's problem other than that person.
I feel similarly about words like "dark", or "whitelist/blacklist", which have documented nonracial etymology, etc. At some point we draw the line, but we draw it to reject absurdity, not to embrace it.
I'd much prefer we spend all this time and organizational effort actually tackling racial inequality, dismantling racial infrastructure, implementing reparations, etc. instead of finding ever more ways to pat ourselves on the back for minimal effort.
> I'd much prefer we spend all this time and organizational effort actually tackling racial inequality, dismantling racial infrastructure, implementing reparations, etc.
As most people do. Guess all of that will happen simultaneously in the chaotic cauldron of society, including language evolution to that happy middle ground over time when terms find common well-accepted meaning.