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Incorrect. Systemic and institutional racism are systemic, and racism is personal.

Here's the definition of racism according to Google:

> prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

When most people say racism, they mean the dictionary (also, the colloquial and correct) definition, not the definition that sociology textbooks have tried to propagate.



did you read the definition that you copy-pasted?

>against a person ... typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

this clearly implies white people cannot be the victims of racism (at least not in america)


> typically


Given that qualifier it is atypical that marginalized or minority aren't operative. Does that really pass the threshold in your mind necessary for me to be incorrect in what I'm claiming?

It's hilarious to me that the reactionary position on this (wherein people are quoting dictionary definitions and wiki articles) manifestly hinges on trivialities.


It's also amazing to me when people point to a dictionary definition, they don't seem to consider where that definition comes from. In this case, Google's definitions come from Oxford Languages, which describe their process:

"We take an evidence-based approach to language content creation, looking at real examples of the ways words are used in context to provide an accurate picture of a language.

To gather this evidence, our corpora – massive collections of spoken and written language data – track and record the very latest language developments across an enormous variety of publications, covering everything from specialist journals to newspapers to social media posts."

https://languages.oup.com/about-us/how-we-create-language-co...

So let me get this straight: Oxford comes up with their definitions by consulting people who have the power and agency to write and publish media. Wouldn't this exclude marginalized people? Incarcerated people? People who are not rich enough, educated enough, or connected enough to be able to afford the ability to publish in the mediums Oxford adds to their corpus?

If the definition comes from books, journals, newspapers, and social media posts, then its going to reflect the thoughts and opinions of authors, journalists, and people rich enough to afford a computer and internet connection.

All this is saying is that the definition changes depending who you ask. So when we want the definition of a word that has a clear power component involved, it behooves us to ask both sides of that divide as to their definition of the term.




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