Last year a student argued that black people were not being unfairly targeted by police because unarmed white people had been killed by police too. Entirely absent from the student’s research was some simple math which would have revealed, that yes, it’s true Whites as well as Blacks are killed, but black people are disproportionately likely to die, even while unarmed, at the hands of police. According to research by a Nebraska criminologist, in 2016, “police killed 38 unarmed blacks and 32 unarmed whites. Whites accounted for 49 percent of all 2015 fatal police shootings, while blacks constituted 26 percent.” According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 12.3% of the U.S. population is black, over 76% are white. Being Black in America is dangerous.

Black Lives Matter was formed to address this terrible reality.

I think most people know this, unless they just don’t want to know it.

Beyond that, I am a person committed to language, to the use of “every day” when I mean something that happens each day, and “everyday” when I mean it is ordinary.

How we use our words matters. I have thought a lot about the “All Lives Matter” slogan, which entirely misses the point, and other wording that is offensive. My husband has called a Portland television station when he heard the term “gypped” used. He explained patiently that it is a racist and bigoted term.

On the other hand, sometimes a little knowledge is a tricky thing. A video on Facebook declared “Gypsy” so offensive that it was written “G—y” and bleeped. Well, maybe, but some Romani people actually embrace that term, and the video utterly failed to address the many other self-proclaimed terms used by Romani around the world.

And then there is “white trash” which is definitely a bigoted slur against poor white people during a period when many Americans have been told that their poverty is their own fault. “White trash” is also something else, perhaps something worse than a slam against poor whites. Think about how it sounds when someone says it: “white trash.” The emphasis (the accent) is on “white” as if distinguishing between this poor “trashy” person from all other trashy people? from others who are not white? “Don’t be trashy like . . . ?” You might think I am being picky here, but I don’t think so. The use of the term and the way it is said implies a depth of insensitivity and racism that even the user might not recognize.

I know, I know, I am going to have to hear about “political correctness” which is itself a misunderstood and misused word. The left brought it to America as satire fifty years ago, adopting a communist term and using it ironically. It was a joke. Today, almost no one uses it except as a slam against people choosing language and ideas intended to be courteous. Notice, next time you hear it used. “You are being politically correct.” Hear that sneer? Someone is trying to shut up another person, most often a person who is merely attempting to be polite.

Language matters. We misspeak, we are rude out of ignorance . . . and we apologize. We try to avoid offense because it matters that we not hurt others’ feeling. That is at the basis of a civil society.

It is an everyday struggle. If you are at all astute about political realities, you do not say what Ron DeSantis said the other day. An ordinary person in some all-white rural backwater might hear such a thing without immediately recognizing the loaded language DeSantis used. It is impossible to believe a smart politician was unaware.

“At a dinner with Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, Trump lashed out at a vocal critic, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He painted the former Navy pilot as cowardly, falsely suggesting he took an early release from a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam because of his father’s military rank and left others behind.

“Mattis swiftly corrected his boss: ‘No, Mr. President, I think you’ve got it reversed.’ The defense secretary explained that McCain, who died Aug. 25, had in fact turned down early release and was brutally tortured during his five years at the ‘Hanoi Hilton.’ ”

For an ordinary person to have gotten this story wrong is one thing, for the leader of our country, it is pathetic. The rest of the world is paying attention.

That is, ordinary people in their own homes are allowed to misspeak—we all make mistakes and inevitably will. Our leaders are supposed to be better than this. Public speakers are supposed to think first. Every day.