I’m a leftist and this argument is used a lot by leftists as a way to brush off interpersonal racism against white people, but I think this is harmful because it unnecessarily combines the definitions of interpersonal and systemic racism, and it’s important to distinguish the two.
90% of the time people who complain about anti-white racism are full of shit but the right way to deal with it is to either ignore them or confront them on their argument directly. I think it’s fair to say that interpersonal racism against whites is less of a problem for a lot of reasons (either because it’s less common, it doesn’t tap into trauma in the same way it does for POC, or it has less severe effects because anti-white rhetoric doesn’t affect whites systematically). But because those arguments are more complicated and people don’t wanna take the effort to make them, they come up with this new definition of racism that makes no sense and just serves to shut up people who don’t agree with it.
If interpersonal racism is only valid when accompanied by systemic racism, asian americans who aren’t first-gen immigrants can’t experience racism, since they don’t experience racism systemically. Other racial minorities can’t experience racism from black americans since black people suffer from systemic racism in america more than any other group by far, and therefore have less power in society.
If interpersonal racism was defined by the existence of systemic racism, there would be no need to distinguish the two. But it’s really important to understand the differences between types of racism so we can be specific when talking about racism and discussing its consequences. If this means acknowledging that white people can technically experience racism, that’s fine and doesn’t contradict the struggles of racial minorities. I also think turning the definition of racism into an equation is trying to “quantify” racism and turning it into oppression olympics which is always unhelpful.
I want my view changed because if there’s a good reason for me to agree with the “prejudice + power” statement, I wanna know about it.
