Rethinking Race: Part 7, “I can’t be a racist … I’m part of a minority group.”

Critical race theory … Whoopi Goldberg suspended for comments about Jews and race … once again we are arguing about racism … welcome to the seventh in an eight-part series on how we understand America’s original sin. In Part 7, we will look at the move to identify ‘racism’ with the harm inflicted on others by dominant ethnic groups when they use the power that they possess to enhance their own position at the expense of other groups. Given that understanding, members of minority may be biased, but they cannot be racist.

If you are a white person living in the United States, and you are involved in neither academia nor political activism, you may be surprised to learn that you cannot — by definition — ever be a victim of racism. You may believe that racism is prejudice toward, or discrimination aimed at, people of other races or ethnicities, arising from a conviction that one’s own race or ethnicity is in some sense superior to others. So why can’t white people experience racism? Don’t people in other races sometimes harbor prejudice against those of fair complexion and European descent?

The answer, obviously, is yes — they can and do. But prejudicial attitudes and an occasional incident of discrimination are not, it is now argued, sufficient to be classified as racism. The definition in…