Racism is a system in which a dominant race believe they are superior and benefit from the oppression of other races - whether they want to or not.
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.
Racism also crosses religious and cultural boundaries. Islamophobia is racism mixed with cultural intolerance. Islamophobia targets markers of moslem identity. Evident in how perpetrators of Islamophobic hate crime disproportionately
target visibly moslem women, in the same way that racism often targets
people for the colour of their skin. Islamophobes often target Sikhs because Sikhs wear turbans, wrongly believing only moslems wear turbans.
Racism isn't one race hating another, that'
s something you tell kids, i.e. when kids ask where do babies come from, you explain it at a level they understand, you don't get too technical.
Unfortunately many
people never look into racism and their understanding of racism never advances beyond the kindergarten
definition.
Racists implement systems that privilege the dominant race at every conceivable social, political and economical opportunity.
When black
people are rejected from obtaining loans they cannot 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, many end up in jail. 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 racism.
