So based on the dictionary, it doesn’t seem to limit who can and cannot be racist.
But according to this video, the answer is no.
So is there a different sociological definition of racism? Is there a reason it’s not adopted by Merriam-Webster?
Note: I don’t know the answer and have seen this pop up often on Facebook by friends. Since there’s not a factual answer I couldn’t post this in GQ and it seemed a bit too contentious for IMHO.
It really is a matter of semantics. I learned in college that racism was prejudice with power. Institutional racism, I think they called it. Thus, a group without institutional power could not be racist, but could be prejudiced.
Version I heard: Anyone can be racist, it takes power to discriminate.
So I would say that it is easily possible for African Americans to be racist, but their opportunities to discriminate at a significant level are limited in our current society.
Wouldn’t the whole point of mentioning “institutional racism” be that other forms of racism aren’t institutional?
Like, if my wife asks me if I’ve ever cheated on her, and I reply that since the day we got married I haven’t had oral sex with anyone else – yeah, that adjective is there for a reason, isn’t it? Doesn’t it, by definition, imply that the other kind is possible?
(That said, if we for some reason go by the terms laid out by the video: wouldn’t this or that affirmative action policy be “a form of discrimination based on skin color and ethnic origin” that’s “kept alive through power and institutional reinforcement”?)
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes, of course. Anyone can be racist. And also many racial minorities are racist against each other, too.
My answer would be “Of course they can”
So if a group of Black men decide to kill someone because he is White, that’s not racist? And a group of twenty armed men doesn’t have any degree of power over a single unarmed man?
Or if a Black woman owns a factory and refuses to promote Chinese people because they are untrustworthy, that’s not racist, and a factory doesn’t have any power over her employees?
Conversely, some old man sitting outside a store in Buttfuck, Alabama talking about Niggers isn’t racisst because he has no power.
How silly.
Everyone has power of some sort. Prisoners are about the most powerless people in our society, and racism is rampant in prisons. Even if we accept that there needs to be an element of power to racism (which is begging the question), that still allows everyone in th world to be racists if they choose.
I think there’s three levels of racism.
Personal racism: This is the way you treat other people on a one-to-one basis.
Situational racism: This is the way you treat people you have some kind of power over.
Institutional racism: This is the way society treats a group of people.
Black people can certainly engage in the first two forms of racism.
A black person can hate white people. That’s personal racism.
A black business owner can treat his white employees unfairly. A black police officer can harass white civilians. A black criminal can target white victims. That’s situational racism.
But I can’t think of any examples of black people in America engaging in institutional racism. There just aren’t any parts of American society where black people collectively have that kind of power.
That said, there are most likely places in Africa where there is institutional racism directed against white people by the black majority society.
So if a White family went and lived in any black neighbourhood in the country, at any time in history, the entire neighbourhood, ie the society, would be exactly as welcoming as if it were a Black family?
And there has never been a time when Black neighbourhoods made a deliberate, clearly-stated attempt to boycott businesses owned by non-Blacks?
I don’t believe it. All people have power within their own societies. That’s why the societies exist.
The neighborhood isn’t the entire society. They still go to the same schools as others outside of the neighborhood, and are protected by the same police, and are judged in the same courts, and so on, all of which are likely to be controlled mostly by white folks. I think that, in order to have institutional racism, you’d need at least an entire city.
That may be true if you are willing to see “majority white” as “institutional” but refuse to see “majority black” that way. There are many cities in which blacks effectively control the city government in much the same way that white people control it in others. There’s no reason to see it as “institutional” in one place and not the other.
If racism is only important in group situations, then no, I guess minorities can’t be racist. But if racism is an individual problem, and the law treats it primarily as an individual issue, then any one person can be racist against any other person. How racism affects groups is primarily a concern for academics. A white individual can be denied a job because of his or her race, singled out for physical attack, slighted for supposed lack of skills(white kids who go to majority-minority schools always getting picked last for pickup games). The thing about racism is that like anything else it tends to hurt the poorest most. A rich CEO is never going to have anything more than his feelings hurt because of racism. The poor white dude faces daily consequences from racism, which is why a lot of poor white dudes are pissed off. They don’t feel privileged and many have been denied employment, denied promotion, or attacked on account of their skin color.
What if we get a black Attorney General who answers only to the black President?
Or more to the point a black attorney general who drops charges against black activists who were engaged in voter intimidation.
Racism has nothing to do with power. It has to do with beliefs. Linking it to “power” or the patriarchy is nothing more than an attempt to excuse bad behavior.
What Chronos said. A neighborhood or even a city is not a society. Situational racism can exist in places like that. But institutional racism needs to exist within a larger society that’s willing to either support the racism or at least look the other way.
That doesn’t happen with large scale black racism in America. If a black mayor goes too far in harassing white residents, they would go to the governor or the press or the national government. If a black police department started shooting unarmed white people, the FBI would step in. If a black business owner refused to hire or promote white employees, there would be lawsuits. And these complaints would be taken seriously and investigated. The system works for white people.
That said, the system often works for black people too if the problem gets big enough. There are still a lot of people who want to ignore anti-black racism but the majority of people, black and white, are willing to acknowledge racism when it gets big enough. So institutional racism is on the decline in America. Nowadays most racism in America is either situational or personal.
There’s also another issue: simple numbers. Let’s say for the sake of argument, that black people and white people are equally racist as individuals and everybody carries out one racist act against a member of the other race each day.
White people outnumber black people about ten to one in America. So if everybody carries out one racist act per day, an average black person would be the target of ten racist acts each day while an average white person would be the target of one racist act every ten days. Due to nothing but the disparity in numbers, black people would receive a hundred times as much racism as white people.
OKay, can minorities be racist against each other, or does that not matter either?
The argument that racism requires power was invented in the 1970s as a “defense” against accusations of racism by various black people or groups. If someone wants to use that definition, then I feel that they should come up with a qualifying adjective or a new term. If one believes or feels that any group is superior to or inferior to any other group based on a perception of race, that is racism.
On a slight tangent, the definition of institutional racism that has been used a couple of times in this thread does not match the definition with which I have been familiar over the last 40+ years. Institutional racism is the effect of attitudes that are demonstrated through the policies or actions of institutions, based on the unconsidered feelings or beliefs of the agents of institutions that arose from earlier racist behavior by or beliefs expressed by society. This is why even black cops occasionally pull over black drivers for Driving While Black (because, as cops, they sense that there is something “wrong” with certain black drivers being in certain neighborhoods), or why whites tend to get more lenient sentences and better offers for rehabilitation than blacks do in the criminal justice system, even when the prosecutors and judges may be black, (because there is a general perception in society that blacks are less contrite or more inclined to crime). The agents of the institutions may actually hold very anti-racist views, but when carrying out different functions, unexpressed beliefs tend to affect their actions through the agency of the institution.
I don’t know who’s saying racism doesn’t matter.
To answer your other question, sure, people in one ethnic minority can be racist towards people in a different ethnic minority.
People can even be racist against other people in their own ethnic group.