Jeremy Stangroom

- I'd been wound up by some other sociologist making exactly the same claim about the word racism!

Don’t you think it more accurately describes the actual problem of racism by moving it away from this idea that it’s someone calling someone else a “cracker”? Of moving it see from interpersonal to structural.

Analogously, a Marxist might be right that social class is best understood in terms of relations to means of production, but they don't get to claim people are using the term class incorrectly when they use it to distinguish between manual and non-manual labour, for example.

But one can claim that it IS better understood that way and the definition should reflect that.

Not if definition excludes things it ought not to exclude. So, for example: black power group, committed to white genocide because of inherent genetic inferiority of white race, undertakes terroristic acts of violence against whites - on your view, not racist. That's ludicrous.

No, not at all? That is also a fairly absurd example, although I imagine that was your point. That's still a systematic form of racial violence, but the power element is missing as you say.

The structural, systemic element is missing - systematic is a red herring here. Yes, it's a reductio ad absurdum, and it works as such. Of course such a group would be correctly labelled as racist.

Right, but the definition I am putting forward captures the normative and instrumental problems of racism, and refocuses the gaze where it belongs; on people and groups of power.