Yes! Lets do a quick thread on this.
For clarity: I am primarily (ideologically) a critical race theorist and so as I define terms, I am doing so, as we all do for all work, from a particular (though in this case widely held) academic lens...
For clarity: I am primarily (ideologically) a critical race theorist and so as I define terms, I am doing so, as we all do for all work, from a particular (though in this case widely held) academic lens...
To effectively define "racism," we must also define "prejudice" and "discrimination." We could add bigotry in here too, but for the sake of my own time, I'll stick with these 3.
Prejudice: a preconceived or assumed negative (generally)ideology toward a person or group based exclusively on the persons membership in a defined social group/community. In this way prejudice extends beyond race to gender, sexuality,etc. We will focus on race for continuity
Anyone can be prejudiced, there is not necessarily power or privilege involved and prejudices in and of themselves are able to be held without having structural/systemic backing
Discrimination: refers to the TREATMENT that is rooted in a prejudiced ideology. Namely, making my ideology about a group into an action that negatively impacts the group that one has a prejudice toward.
Racism to that end both involves prejudice & discrimination, but has the added dynamic of the power to enforce ones prejudice and discriminatory practices through structures that uphold racist institutions.Those institutions then reinforce prejudice to maintain white supremacy
A simple way to put this is that racism is prejudice+power, not simply a prejudice ideology.
The history of racism (and by extension racists) is one of White people imposing their will structural over and onto people of color because power historically allows the ideas of whiteness to become policy
In this regard, people of color do not hold the power in the United States (the racial construct I am referring to) to turn their prejudice into the systemic subjugation of White people. We lack the social power BECAUSE OF RACISM.
People of color can certainly be prejudiced and hold unfair or harmful views of other racial groups and can practice discrimination on a more micro level; however, we are unable to structurally impose those values onto White people or imbed them in institutions.
Additionally, this is why the notion of reverse racism is unhelpful/not a thing at all. If power (membership in whiteness) makes one able to perpetuate racism, we shouldn’t call people of color having race based prejudice against white people racism.
