"But racism is prejudice + power, not what you read in the dictionary." "SEMANTICS," he shouted as he pulled on his My Little Pony t-shirt.
I don't find this "systemic" viewpoint fruitful because there are countless systems/institutions. Power+privilege are contextual. It's bogus to say "X can't be racist because X isn't 'systemically' in power." Is the system a single static pyramid to represent the nation?
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It may help to understand that racism is not a thing one group does to another but something a society does to itself, systematically valuing one set of characteristic over another or one group over another. Racism is the systematic over valuing of white people over POC.
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Even African Americans will test positive on implicit bias tests *against African Americans* because they're the recipients of all the same societal messages that white people are. They do tend to have lower implicit bias levels, though, as they have more chances for counter msgs
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Racism is simply part of being socialized in the United States. It's our culture. We can only change it by actively fighting it. And you can't do that by imagining hypothetical white kids being oppressed at black schools.
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It's true that power is contextual, but contexts are not categorical. That hypothetical school still exists in the US. The only privilege that one wouldn't have would be superiority of numbers. They still would be likely to be less harshly disciplined by their teachers,
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An ability to leave the school to go to any other in the area without parents going nuts at board meetings, a relative certainty that if he gets pulled over by the cops and doesn't threaten anyone, he won't be killed, a greater likelihood of leaving poverty... Shall I go on?
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Because the point you're missing is that even in contexts where African Americans are more numerous, the power is still held by whites or on behalf of white supremacy.
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The hypothetical you are looking for to make your argument would be a white kid in elementary school in Wakanda.
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Thanks I get your points. Now surely there is systematic-racism AND racism? Absolving individual discrimination-by-race from the label "racism" is harmful. Like if I refuse change to white homeless guys, just cuz they're white, that's not racist? Call a spade is a spade!
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What we are saying is racism means one specific thing, and prejudice and bigotry are a wider concept. What is the problem with that? Classist is a word. Bigoted is a word. They both work.
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Um, yes, that’s exactly what a system is.
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