I recently found out that a visitor to my home considers me a racist ...

[The Traveler]

160. You can take that position

But it does little to improve your ability to successfully transmit the message.

Here's the problem ... and I provide a perfect example. (This is why I am appreciative of the OP ... for whatever reason it helped me see a point I had been unable to quite connect with before.) You say "racism". I THINK I know the agreed upon meaning of that word, but I am actually in a different conceptual space ... a conceptual space that does not include the "institutional power" aspect. We are already mis-communicating.

So when you say "a black person cannot be racist", or something similar, I completely miss the point. (And I have!) On surface inspection the statement seems irrational to me. I leap to a conclusion made inevitable by the definition of the word as I have employed it over the years, a word consistent with dictionaries. You see, I am regarding the term as being descriptive of an individual's character. 1SBM is using it in a more technical sense as being descriptive of the behavior of SYSTEMS.

For what ever reason, I had never quite made the connection to the institutional power aspect of the term as used in this context. (I'm dense sometimes.) So I think we're talking about something else entirely. This OP actually gave me an "Ah Hah!" moment. Suddenly, I get it, the expanded definition of the word. And I find myself forced to agree with the statement. (Indeed, I find the conclusion itself non-controversial. All you have to do is look at the statistics of our criminal justice system to see the racial bias of that outcomes of that system ... institutional power run amok, in my view.)

Like I said, I'm dense some times. But I'm not THAT dense.

Anyway, I appreciate the topic and resultant conversation.

Cheers,

Trav