I wonder if there's a slight difference in how racism theory is taught in different areas of the world (like the US vs. Europe and other places).
In the end I think it's mostly semantics if one person uses the term "racist/racism" to refer to racist urges within the individual and to refer to the system as "systematic or institutionalized racism" or if you refer to the personal attitude as "racial prejudice" and to anything within the system as "racism".
(dictionary.com and other places carry both definitions)
Which of course leads to complications if people use the term to mean one thing and people understand the other.
So person one might say "I'm not racist, but I'm part of a racist system" (in the sense, of "I personally don't or try not to commit racist deeds") while the next person feels that that is a tautology.
Which of course makes sense too. It seems idiotic to say "I'm not a racist, I just profit from a racist system". On the other hand you have issues like "I didn't create it, I don't propagate it, I don't profit from it that much".
And of course there is the question of how the system came into place. If white people have racial prejudices and the country/system is made out of mostly white people then the country/system will have racial prejudices. Yet the indiviual has little influence over what the system does. Yet the system is made out of people. So how could the system be made less racist except if all people that make the system found a way to be indivually less racist/more fair? Which of course seems like a pretty unrealistic concept in itself, so most low key/low effort solution seems to be that indivual people try to suppress their personal racial prejudices and try to find the obvious places in the system where the inequalities are obvious and try to find way to level the field (with apologies or affirmative action or reparations or scholarships etc).
no subject
In the end I think it's mostly semantics if one person uses the term "racist/racism" to refer to racist urges within the individual and to refer to the system as "systematic or institutionalized racism" or if you refer to the personal attitude as "racial prejudice" and to anything within the system as "racism".
(dictionary.com and other places carry both definitions)
Which of course leads to complications if people use the term to mean one thing and people understand the other.
So person one might say "I'm not racist, but I'm part of a racist system" (in the sense, of "I personally don't or try not to commit racist deeds") while the next person feels that that is a tautology.
Which of course makes sense too. It seems idiotic to say "I'm not a racist, I just profit from a racist system". On the other hand you have issues like "I didn't create it, I don't propagate it, I don't profit from it that much".
And of course there is the question of how the system came into place. If white people have racial prejudices and the country/system is made out of mostly white people then the country/system will have racial prejudices. Yet the indiviual has little influence over what the system does. Yet the system is made out of people. So how could the system be made less racist except if all people that make the system found a way to be indivually less racist/more fair? Which of course seems like a pretty unrealistic concept in itself, so most low key/low effort solution seems to be that indivual people try to suppress their personal racial prejudices and try to find the obvious places in the system where the inequalities are obvious and try to find way to level the field (with apologies or affirmative action or reparations or scholarships etc).