Spend any decent amount of time in a primary school and you will inevitably hear students angrily accuse each other of bullying over the slightest altercation in the classroom or playground. These kids are responding to the very necessary anti-bullying education programs that run in schools, but unfortunately they’re missing the point. Bullying is a sustained campaign of physical or emotional intimidation, whereas an isolated incident of teasing or physical violence, while being equally unacceptable, is not actually bullying.

A parallel could be drawn with wider society, where people in private and public discourse tend to be extremely quick to slap the label “racist” on anyone who says something that is remotely connected to race, in the process watering down the concept of racism until it is almost meaningless.

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