What is racism?
It's a question that we don't ask often enough because most of us assume we know the answer. But the truth of the matter is that the answer depends wholly upon who you ask.
Some people define it so narrowly that no one except skinheads and Klan members could be considered racist (a tactic used by those who don't want to confront their own subtle forms of racism). Others define it so broadly that every person on the planet is, by definition, racist (a tactic used by those who refuse to accept some measure of personal accountability).
Tim Wise, in part one of his most recent essay, "Reading Racism Right to Left: Reflections on a Powerful Word and Its Applications," seeks a definitive, inclusive definition--no matter how uncomfortable it might make us.
Excerpts:
As with other words that end in the letters “ism,” racism is essentially two things: an ideology and a system. Just as capitalism or communism are ideologies, so too is racism. And just as capitalism and communism (or fascism, totalitarianism etc.) are systems, so too is racism a system.
At the ideological level, racism can be defined (and is, typically, without controversy) as the belief in the superiority or inferiority of a given group of people, where the source of that superiority or inferiority is deemed to be the “race” of the group: either due to some genetic, biological or perhaps cultural tendency specific to the group in question.
In other words, to believe that one “racial” group is generally better than another or worse, smarter or less intelligent, more moral or less so, is to adhere to a racist philosophy. Are individuals sometimes smarter than other individuals, or more or less moral than others? Of course they are. But ascribing these tendencies of better/worse to entire groups of people is to engage in a form of essentializing—i.e. to suggest that the “essence” of that group is to be smarter or more law-abiding than another—and thus, to engage in racist thinking.
This doesn’t mean it’s racist to note differences between members of different groups, per se. But if it is believed that those differences are caused by something unique or specific to the group from which a person hails, that is when we can justly say that racism attaches.
Now let us turn to the systemic aspect of racism. Just as capitalism and communism are systems for economic and political organization, racism too is a system for organizing society: in this case, a system that organizes that society and its institutions along racially inequitable lines. In short, racism is a system of inequality based on race. That system is perpetuated (and defined, really) by institutional structures in which one race (and in the U.S., whites) have advantages, privileges, head starts or other opportunities that are less available to members of other races. These structures include the labor market, housing market, educational system and justice system among others. Sometimes these structures are maintained by way of formal mechanisms of oppression and terror (as with race-based enslavement, wars of genocidal aggression, segregation, race-based lynching, etc.), and at other times they are maintained by mechanisms that are more informal and indirect.
So, for instance, if segregation is outlawed but the job market is still racially divided due to old boy’s networks for hiring, or due to the quality of one’s prior schooling (itself often linked to race, since race so often determines the neighborhood where one grows up), or prior credentials (themselves accumulated, or not, because of past opportunity), racism can still be operating in the workforce. If schools are integrated but are still allowed to separate students by so-called ability (determined by tests that are inadequate predictors of talent and which tend to result in the labeling of black and Latino kids as less capable), racism can still be operating.
In other words, at the structural level, racism can exist and do great damage, with or without racism at the ideological level. Hatred and overt bigotry is not required for the operation of systemic racism. So, for instance, although the antebellum and then Jim Crow south was characterized by often warm personal interactions between whites and blacks—and certainly more personal closeness and warm regard than existed in the North—it was also a region of intensely oppressive structures. This is much like the case with patriarchal oppression of women: a structural force that can operate even when the society is replete with many truly loving and caring interactions between men and women.
Read the entire essay here.