It seems to me that the obvious answer here is to spread awareness of the fact that there is a difference between (1) being something and (2) doing something an

It seems to me that the obvious answer here is to spread awareness of the fact that there is a difference between (1) being something and (2) doing something and (3) doing something that someone in the being something category would do. (1) "You are a racist." vs (2) "You have done something that is racist." vs (3) "You have done the same thing that a racist would do." Some percentage of the time, greater than 0.5 and less than 1, (2) equates to (3), since clearly doing a racist thing is the same as what a racist would do, but something that isn't racist might also be the thing that a racist would do. Alice is not a racist AND has not done a racist thing BUT has done the same thing that a racist would do. Dan might be a racist BUT has successfully avoided doing something racist. Eric is not a racist BUT has done a racist thing. And so on... Different people consider different proportions of (1), (2), and (3) when deciding whether someone or something is good/bad within their personal value framework. I guess the essay is saying that it's a shame that often everything gets collapsed into (1), but that's not a special problem. Surely it's always harmful in some way to mis-categorize anything.