It's pretty simple when you strip away the rhetoric, and let go of preconceived notions of what the words mean. Racism can kind of exist on an individual level

It's pretty simple when you strip away the rhetoric, and let go of preconceived notions of what the words mean. Racism can kind of exist on an individual level between any two people. (X refuses to serve Y because they're from New Zealand.) But racism is only a social problem when the people with racist views have the power to enforce them. The power is key to the social dynamic; without power, what large scale effect does racism have? Now social scientists (and a lot of other academics) care about racism only as a social problem (that's their field of study!); they define racism in a way that makes sense in that context. Racism is a set of cultural behaviors that has the effect of oppressing a particular racial group. Sexism is behavior that has the effect of oppressing women. (Note that the definition is based on effect, and not intent. From a social perspective, intent doesn't really matter.) This isn't some insane world view. It's jargon, just like the word momentum means something a bit different in the context of physics than it does in politics. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, a lot of people will argue on the internet about racism/sexism/etc without even checking whether they're using the word the same way. :( People like you maybe haven't been exposed to this other definition, but I have no idea why social justice types aren't more careful to avoid misunderstanding. But please, don't write off the fundamental ideas behind this particular use, just because it surprises you. There are a lot of valid ideas there even if you don't like the particular set of terms associated with it.