A group of Notre Dame students has become the latest pack of scolds promoting senseless racialism in the name of ending racism. The proper response is to tell them to grow up already.

Racialism is the practice of interpreting events or policies through the lens of race. Unlike racism, it is not necessarily insidious, as when pollsters or demographers analyze data — but outside of a narrow range of legitimate social science based on hard numbers, racialism usually is almost equally destructive and divisive. Far from judging people, as advised by Martin Luther King Jr., on the “content of their character” and of their achievements, a racialist approach emphasizes skin over substance and color above content.