Insensitive use of language by some campaigners is playing into the hands of extremists, argues Christopher Coppock, while A Black Lives Matter protest in London in July, 2020. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Getty Images A Black Lives Matter protest in London in July, 2020. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Getty Images Letters Wed 24 Feb 2021 13.32 EST Last modified on Wed 24 Feb 2021 14.37 EST Nesrine Malik is right that “a culture war rages, featuring daily assaults on a cast of characters and organisations broadly associated with racial justice, migrant rights or attempts to reappraise Britain’s account of its colonial history” (The culture war isn’t harmless rhetoric, it’s having a chilling effect on equality, 22 February). But because she is on the right side of history, she apparently fails to see that the choice of words that the Black Lives Matter movement uses to frame its funding requirement, ie “to improve black people’s lives in a racist society”, actually leaves those millions of people who were educated in the belief that empire was good with nowhere to go: if it is a racist society and I am not on the right side of history, then I am a racist.