Whites can experience prejudice but not racism

The argument

No, white people cannot be victims of racism, yet they can experience prejudice within society. Racism and prejudice are fundamentally and technically different, which allows the white race to experience one, but not the other. Racism can only be enacted by someone who holds racial privilege in a society with racial oppression. This therefore includes all white people currently living in the United States. However, prejudice is defined as a “preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.” Therefore, this argument can follow the old rhyme from geometry; all squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares. Comparatively, all racism can be considered prejudice, but not all prejudice can be considered racism. White people cannot be systemic targets due to the color of their skin. However, they too can be targeted by blanket assumptions on the basis of their skin colour, just as blanket assumptions can be made about gender, sexuality, nationality, and more. However, these instances do not translate into institutionalized norms. Racism is a daily lived experience of black people, manifesting in racial profiling, police mistreatment, workplace discrimination and economic inequalities. White people do not have a comparable experience, even if they have experienced prejudice. As such, they cannot have experience racism.

Premises

Counter-arguments

On the contrary, white people can be victims of racism because prejudices related to colour of skin are automatically categorized as racist efforts. Even if white people have no experience of systemic racism, facing negative effects and having negative experiences due to one’s skin colour is a racist experience, not only a prejudiced one

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The distinction is stipulated rather than argued for. "Racism is prejudice plus systemic power" is one definition used in parts of sociology; ordinary usage, dictionaries and anti-discrimination law define racism by the ground of the treatment rather than by the standing of the person doing it. A premise that fixes the meaning of the contested word settles the question before the argument begins, which is what the counter objects to. [Rejecting P2] The comparison is between unlike things. That prejudice against white people has not been institutionalised in the USA is a claim about scale and history, and it is compatible with individual acts being racist; the premise needs the further claim that only institutionalised patterns count, which is the definition again rather than evidence for it. The systemic harms listed are real and documented, and none of them establishes the definitional point. [Rejecting C] The conclusion is also narrower than it sounds, since on its own definition it says only that white people in the USA do not experience the systemic form. That leaves untouched what most people are asking — whether someone can be mistreated because of being white — which the premises concede can happen and then decline to name.