A racist is a person that adheres to a system in which a dominant race believe they are superior and implements systems that privilege the dominant race at every conceivable social, political and economical opportunity. A racist in essence, wants to benefit from the oppression of other races.
We
don't live in a society where every racial group has equal power, status and opportunity.
Yes, white people all over the world throughout
history have experienced slavery and persecution but have not been enslaved, colonised or forced to segregate on the scale that black people have. They do not face housing or job discrimination, police brutality, poverty or incarceration at the levels that black people do. This is not to say that they do not experience things like poverty and police brutality at all but again, not on the same scale - not even close.
Racists also discriminate across religious and cultural boundaries. Islamophobia is anti-moslem
racism mixed with cultural intolerance. Anti-moslems are racists that
target markers of moslem identity. Perpetrators of anti-moslem hate crime disproportionately
target visibly moslem
women, in the very same
way racists
target people for the colour of their skin. Anti-moslem racists often
target Sikhs because Sikhs wear turbans, wrongly believing only moslems wear turbans.
Racists imposed a system where black people were and still are rejected from obtaining loans, thus blacks could not build wealth for future generations. When they are refused home loans to move into
white neighbourhoods, they remain in poor neighbourhoods with
depressed infrastructure, their
kids go to underfunded overcrowded schools, drop out and with no job prospects due to racist employers not willing to hire them, they commit crime to survive and racist judges will give them longer prison sentences than they do to white folk. Racist police also target blacks more than white folk and charge them for crimes they didn't commit.
Upon release they cannot
get decent paying jobs, they remain in poor areas, their
kids go to underfunded overcrowded schools, the cycle of poverty continues generation after generation.
That is the reality of racist oppression and
racism.
