racism

any attitude, action, social policy, or institutional structure that discriminates against a person or a group because of their color constitutes racism. More specifically, racism is the subordination of people of color by white people. "While an individual person of color may discriminate against white people or even hate them, his or her behavior or attitude cannot be called 'racist.' He or she may be considered prejudiced against whites and we may all agree that the person acts unfairly and unjustly, but racism requires something more than anger, hatred, or prejudice; at the very least, it requires prejudice plus power. The history of the world provides us with a long record of white people holding power and using it to maintain that power and privilege over people of color, not the reverse" (Paula S. Rothenberg, Racism and Sexism). "Racism is not just the sum total of all the individual acts in which white people discriminate, harass, stereotype or otherwise mistreat people of color. The accumulated effects of centuries of white racism have given it an institutional nature which is more entrenched than racial prejudice. In fact, it is barely touched by changes in individual white consciousness. We often find it difficult to see or to know how to challenge institutional racism because we are so used to focusing on individual actions and attitudes" (Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism). Patricia Hill Collins (Fighting Words) defines institutionalized racism as the "combination of practices whereby Blacks and other people of color as a group or class receive differential treatment within schools, housing, employment, healthcare, and other social institutions. Unlike bias and prejudice, which are characteristics of individuals, institutionalized racism operates through the everyday rules and customs of social institutions." Zora Neale Hurston (Dust Tracks on a Road) wrote, "Light came to me when I realized that I did not have to consider any racial group as a whole. God made them duck by duck and that was the only way I could see them." Seeing people duck by duck may be a start to dismantling stereotypes. (BTW, white folks don't get to define what racism is and isn't.) See also African American, antiracist, Black/black (n)., code words, color blindness, nonracist, race.