Institutional or systemic power is not a necessary component of racism.

The argument

This argument holds that white people can be victims of racism because racism, properly defined, does not require institutional or systemic power: racism is prejudice or discrimination directed at a person on the basis of their race, and that can be aimed at anyone, of any group. The dispute is at bottom definitional. One influential account, drawn from sociology, defines racism as 'prejudice plus power' — meaning only the dominant group in a society can be racist, because only it commands the institutions through which prejudice becomes systemic. This argument rejects that as a specialist redefinition. On the ordinary meaning, reflected in standard dictionaries and everyday usage, racism is antagonism, prejudice or discrimination toward someone because of their race or ethnicity — a description of an attitude and an act, with no clause requiring the perpetrator to belong to a powerful group or the victim to a marginalised one. By that definition, a person abused, attacked, demeaned or discriminated against for being white has suffered racism, just as surely as anyone targeted for any other race. Proponents argue the 'prejudice plus power' definition is not only contestable but self-serving, because it defines the very possibility of anti-white (or other) racism out of existence by fiat, regardless of the concrete experiences of individuals. Whether structural disparities between groups exist is, on this view, a separate question from whether an individual can be a victim of racial prejudice; conflating the two lets one deny the second by pointing at the first. An individual's experience of being targeted for their race is real and wrong whatever the aggregate power balance between their group and another. From this standpoint, racism is about race-based mistreatment, not group power. Because institutional or systemic power is not a necessary component of racism, this argument holds, white people can be victims of racism.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Did you know that in 2010 Black Americans made up 13% of the population but had only 2.7% of the country's wealth? That the median net worth for a white family was $134,000, but the median net worth for a Hispanic family was $14,000, and for a Black family it was $11,000? That the median wealth for a single white woman has been measured at $41,000, while for Hispanic women it was $140, and for Black women, $120? Did you know that? Do you know what that's called? Systemic Racism, and yes, it's really a thing. Did you know that no matter what else is going on in America, year in and year out for the last 60 years, Black unemployment is always about twice as high as white unemployment? And even if you just look at Black college graduates, they're still almost twice as likely to be unemployed as white college graduates? And if you just apply for a job with a white sounding name, you're 50% more likely to get a callback than with a Black sounding name? What would you call it if lifetimes of legal segregation followed by decades of pervasive racist housing policies still, to this day, disadvantage Black people in almost every aspect of life, because where you live can decide everything from how safe you are, to what food you eat, to the quality of your health care to the quality of your job, to the quality of your children's education? You probably know that today's technology lets the government watch what we do and track where we go more than ever before, so much that privacy's almost a thing of the past. But did you know the government watches some of us a lot more than others depending on where we come from? That as recently as 2011 the NYPD was exposed for targeting their surveillance specifically at what they called "ancestries of interest" (Indian, Bangladesh, Pakistani, Guyanese, Egyptian, Lebanese). Using our tax dollars to spy on these people's everyday lives just going to the barbershop and the bookstore, and singling them out for this constant invasion of privacy based on nothing but where their ancestors were born? Did you know that back in the 80s there were less than half a million people in the US prison system, but now, thanks to the war on drugs, there are more than 2 million? That out of every 100,000 Americans about 700 are incarcerated, but out of every 100,000 Black men over 4,000 are incarcerated? And one of the many effects of that trend is that combined with felony disenfranchisement laws, it means 13% of Black American men are denied their right to vote? Did you know that over 40% of drug arrests are not for selling any drugs but just for possession of marijuana? And that White and Black Americans are about equally likely to use marijuana, but Blacks are 3.7 more likely to be arrested for it? And that even if they don't get convicted of a crime that arrest can stay on their record and affect their chances at good jobs, housing and bank loans for the rest of their lives? Did you know that over 40% of drug arrests are not for selling any drugs but just for possession of marijuana? And that White and Black Americans are about equally likely to use marijuana, but Blacks are 3.7 more likely to be arrested for it? And that even if they don't get convicted of a crime that arrest can stay on their record and affect their chances at good jobs, housing and bank loans for the rest of their lives? Did you know that over 40% of drug arrests are not for selling any drugs but just for possession of marijuana? And that White and Black Americans are about equally likely to use marijuana, but Blacks are 3.7 more likely to be arrested for it? And that even if they don't get convicted of a crime that arrest can stay on their record and affect their chances at good jobs, housing and bank loans for the rest of their lives?

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Dictionary definitions record ordinary usage rather than settle a contested concept, and the same dictionaries also carry senses of racism as a system of advantage — so the appeal to the standard meaning does not identify one definition to the exclusion of the other. [Rejecting P2] Calling the power-conditioned account a redefinition is a claim about origins rather than merit; it was developed to name something the individual-prejudice sense does not capture, namely how disparities persist through institutions in the absence of prejudiced intent, and a definition is not refuted by noting that it excludes cases another definition includes. [Rejecting P3] Separating individual mistreatment from structural disparity cuts both ways, since it also allows that both terms can be true at once — that a person can be wronged by race-based abuse while the systemic sense picks out something different — so the premises support a distinction between two phenomena rather than the conclusion that one definition is the correct one.