I've met many people in the real world with this opinion, it's what's being argued against here, the idea that we should redefine racism as exclusively referring to institutional racism. Making it a one way street in the west.
I've yet to hear a single positive reason for doing so that outweighs the massively alienating effect this has on potential allies, nor any answer as to whether a white person can be the subject of racism in a majority non-white country.
They should come up with a new term maybe, but they are definitely different phenomena. A black American who hates whites is a bigot but a white person who might not hate blacks but who think they should maybe "tone it down" or "if they'd just do less crime they'd be as well off as whites" is racist in the institutional racism kind of way.
They don’t want a new term. They want to hijack the buzzword so that it can’t be used against them.
It’s a lot harder to get the point across that someone is a terrible person when I have to use comparatively gentle terms like “biased” or “bigoted” instead of just calling them racist. It’s akin to quoting Atticus Finch instead of calling someone a rapist.
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u/Zappiticas Dec 11 '19
I’ve heard people say this is a thing, but I have yet to see it in the real world