racism equals prejudice plus power, so only whites can be racist?

Searches for "racism power prejudice" bring readers here, so I've lightly rewritten and merged three old posts:

I used to think all white folks, no matter how well-meaning, had a little racism in them. Then I took the Project Implicit race test. I expected to find out how racist I was. Instead, I learned that 20-25% of whites show no implicit racial preference or, like me, show an implicit preference for African Americans.

That inspired me to research "racism = prejudice + power". It was created by a white woman:

"racism = prejudice plus power" is a phrase coined by anti-racism trainer Judith H. Katz in her book White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training, a book rooted in the 12-step movement, conceiving of racism as a disease in need of treatment. In the book, it's on page 53 (2nd edition), almost an aside, an optional addition to dictionary definitions of racism. Mary Langan in her essay, "The Legacy of Radical Social Work" remarks that Katz's phrase and its accompanying approach tend to lead to acrimonious situations.

Mary Anne Mohanraj explains the idea well:

...there’s an alternate and widely-used definition of racism that goes like this: We’re all prejudiced, because we grow up in a racist culture and we inherit those prejudices. But racism is a system of institutional, systemic oppression, and in order to be racist, you need both the prejudice + the power to affect people. By that definition, which a lot of progressives share, PoC (people of color) can’t be racist, because they don’t have any reinforcement from that institutionalized power. We may hold individual racist ideas and thoughts, but we only have the power to do damage with our actions in the rare, brief contexts where our other privileges temporarily override color privilege. A relative of mine may say racist things about black or white people in her own home, but when she engages with the wider world, as she must do daily, she’s just another brown girl, and is therefore at risk.

There’s a definite utility and sense to that definition, but it isn’t the one I normally use.

The problem with the theory is that Condi Rice and Oprah Winfrey have far more power than any white homeless guy living under a bridge, or just about 99.99% of the American population, regardless of color. Others have noticed that:

"By Weind's definition, the American Nazis aren't racists, since they have no power." —ron kozar

 "I thought a racist was any conservative who was winning an argument with a liberal." —anonymous commenter

The more precise definition, of course, is a racist is anyone who disagrees with the idea that racism equals power plus prejudice.

I do think "power plus prejudice" is a perfect description of class oppression, but then, I would.

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Marie Macey and Eileen Moxon examined many of these problems in "An Examination of Anti-Racist and Anti-Oppressive Theory and Practice in Social Work Education". My favorite bits:

...an edifice of theory and action has been constructed on the simplistic 'explanation' of racism as being the outcome of power plus prejudice. Not only does this inaccurately assume a single cause and type of racism but it dangerously implies that there is a single solution to the phenomenon (Gilroy 1990; Husband, 1987; Miles, 1989).

The view that racism is an attribute of the monolithic category of people termed 'white' who hold all the power in society is equally confused and confusing. At one level of abstraction, it is true that a certain sector of the (white, male) population holds much of the economic and decision-making power in Briitish society. It is also true that some members of this group are statistically likely to be racially prejudiced. However, though this knowledge should inform social work education, it has limited utility at the operational level of social work or, often, in the everyday lives of black and white service workers.

Furthermore, if a Pakistai Muslim male refuses to have an African-Caribbean or Indian Hindu female social worker for reasons which, if articulated by a white Christain would be condemned as racist, one has to ask what the point is of denying that this refusal stems from racist (or sexist or sectarian) motivations? Similarly, if one compares the structural position of a white, working class, homeless male with that of a black barrister, would the statement that 'only whites have power' make sense or be acceptable to either of them?

…the approaches [of anti-racism theory] are theoretical and thus closed to the canons of scientific evaluation and because the discourse itself prohibits the open, rigorous and critical interrogation which is essential to theoretical, professional and personal development.

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Modern anti-racism is a commercial movement driven by graduates of the most expensive private colleges and universities in the US. That may explain why Rev. Thandeka, author of Learning To Be White, says anti-racists “make an erroneous assumption about the nature and structure of power in America” and Adolph Reed Jr. says

We live under a regime now that is capable simultaneously of including black people and Latinos, even celebrating that inclusion as a fulfillment of democracy, while excluding poor people without a whimper of opposition.

Though whiteness studies includes people of color, its most-cited promoters are white:

Judith H. Katz, who first defined racism as “prejudice plus power” is the Executive Vice President and “Client Brand Lead” of the Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, a business that prospers by teaching anti-racism.

Peggy McIntosh wrote “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” She's the associate director of the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, one of the fifty most expensive colleges in the US.

Tim Wise, a graduate of Tulane University, has lectured about anti-racism at “over 400 college campuses, including Harvard, Stanford, and the Law Schools at Yale, Columbia, and Vanderbilt.” I watched a little of one of his youtube videos, then quit when he claimed he was doing what black speakers could not. Black speakers have been popular on college campuses since at least the early 1960s. The idea that people like Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King, Fannie Lou Hamer, or Malcolm X could not speak at a college campus today is as silly as the title of one of Wise's books, Speaking Treason Fluently. When the majority of a nation supports diversity, a better title would be Speaking Truisms Fluently.

Wise, Katz, and McIntosh undoubtedly mean well, but they content themselves with a superficial understanding of injustice. My favorite Upton Sinclair quote applies: “It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it.”