Scott Madin

people have got to stop with this "so you're calling so-and-so A Racist" crap. that's the most counterproductive possible way to think about racism.https://twitter.com/dpshow/status/1409537922978754562 …

1) what we call "racism" is more accurately described as "an arrangement of society both by laws and social norms that advantages white people and ensures their dominance, as a group, of the structures of power; and disadvantages non-white people, especially Black people".

(NB all of this is with reference to a US context) 1.5) now that's kind of a mouthful for casual conversation, so I more often use terms like "structural white supremacism" or "anti-Black white supremacy"*. "racism" is not a good term IMO, because it attempts to be "neutral."

1.75) *I prefer "supremacism" rather than "supremacy", because I feel like it's clearer that the former refers to an ideology, a belief system, while the second sounds like it purports to describe a fact.

2) everyone who grows up in a structurally white supremacist society is, necessarily, indoctrinated with white supremacist ideology; of course it's much easier for the people who are most harmed by it to resist and reject that indoctrination, and harder for those who benefit most

2.5) and even white people certainly _can_ reject that indoctrination, but it's harder for us and takes constant work. the point is that being "racist" isn't a binary, on-off switch, and it isn't an existential condition that one either Is or Isn't.

3) so it doesn't make sense to say someone is or isn't "A Racist," which (as @jsmooth995 explained long ago) also leads us down useless rabbit-holes about what they "really" feel or believe in their Heart Of Hearts.

4) people are racist in varying degrees, accordingly as they hold racist beliefs, but what anyone else ~truly~ believes is always unknowable. people's _words and deeds_ are racist to the extent they support/reinforce/align with structural anti-Black white supremacism.