yes? isn't this why racism is defined as "power + prejudice"? anyone can be prejudiced for or against a particular race, but only some people are in a position to do something about it.
There's no "power" component to racism. That was recently "added" so that certain groups could claim immunity from being deemed racist. Racism is simply racial prejudiced, or, prejudging someone based on their race. Anyone, of any race, can be racist, no power needed.
The saddest part is that the USA is the least racist country in the history of the world, and were in our least racist era only 20 years ago. Seems like most of the progress of the Civil Rights Movement has been lost since.
> That was recently "added" so that certain groups could claim immunity from being deemed racism
> There's no "power" component to racism. That was recently "added"
No it wasn’t particularly recent in the history of the term “racism”; The popular expression “prejudice plus institutional power” is more than 50 years old (1970), the idea probably older, and the word “racism” itself is less than 120 years old.
> The saddest part is that the USA is the least racist country in the history of the world
The saddest part is that people believe that as an article of faith.
> and were in our least racist era only 20 years ago.
We were in the era of least concern about racism around 20 years ago, which happened to correspond to the end of an expansion that unlike those since had not just strong aggregate numbers bit decent distributional features on both income quintile and race dimensions.
There's a non-trivial number of people who will tell you with a straight face that white people can't experience racism. People have redefined the word to mean what they want it to mean, which may have very little in common with the definition of the word.
> There's a non-trivial number of people who will tell you with a straight face that white people can't experience racism.
I'm not a big fan of the word games that people play these days, but I would otherwise mostly agree with those people. the status of the person/people discriminating against you makes a big difference. the worst example I can think of from my own life was when a DMV employee went out of her way to fail me on my driver's license test. another employee told me she only lets black kids pass. that sucked, but I went back the next day and passed with a different employee.
anyways, all I'm saying is people discriminate on the basis of race/gender/sexuality all the time. cis-hetero-rich-white dudes are not spared entirely, but the consequences tend to be minor in comparison.
Low-impact racism is nonetheless racism. Saying that white people cannot experience racism is logically and demonstrably incorrect based on the universal definition of the word. There's no magnitude threshold that has to be met, only that the behavior is based on the color of your skin.
