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I appreciate you clarifying this distinction. I was aware that I was using a non-normative definition that comes from radical leftist intellectual discourse, an

• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > I was aware that I was using a non-normative definition that comes from radical leftist intellectual discourse The problem with this definition is that it conflates racism -- which is problematic in any case -- with an external condition which interacts with racism and makes it more damaging (and, worse, it treats that external condition -- which in reality is a continuously-valued property -- as binary.) By doing so it obstructs discussion of the continuum of problems associated with racism and serves to normalize some racism (which may be less harmful racism in the conditions in which it originates, but as those conditions change for what would otherwise be the better, becomes more harmful without the actual content of the racism changing.) It also has the additional unfortunate side effect that people more distantly following the theorists adopting such a radical definition pick up the conclusion "Black people can't be racist" and lose the context of the understanding of the conditions justifying, in the particular definition the theorists are applying, why negative racial stereotyping of whites by blacks isn't racism, and just taking it as a categorical privilege of blacks (regardless of their position and privilege in a particular milieu) to engage in racial stereotyping and discrimination, because "black people can't be racist".