Talking Points: Who Or What Is A Racist?

by Ron Powell

The following is a series of definitions and descriptions which I have developed to push the discussion/debate/discourse on the question of racism a bit further:

1) A racist is a person who believes that a particular racial or ethnic group is inherently SUPERIOR and that other racial or ethnic groups are inherently INFERIOR and therefor is entitled to enjoy rights and privileges reserved only for the superior group which includes the exploitation, subjugation, and subordination of the inferior groups for the benefit of the superior group.

2) A racists is a person who seeks to propogate, promulgate, perpetuate, preserve, protect or defend a system, structure, organization, bureaucracy, society, culture or government which rests on the proposition that one racial or ethnic group is inherently superior and others are inherently inferior.

3) A racist is a person who has determined that he or she is entitled to or in fact does benefit directly or indirectly from the exclusionary rights and privileges conferred on him/her as a consequence of the notion that one group is inherently superior and that others are inherently inferior.

4) A racist is a person who believes that; irrespective of evidence or manifestation of merit, achievement, accomplishment, edict, sanction, pronouncement, documentation, stautory enactment, executive order, administrative rule & regulation or judicial decision, no person identified as being a member of the INFERIOR group can in any way be deemed to have changed or altered status so as to become a member of the SUPERIOR group.

5) A racist is a person who believs that the concept of racial equality is neither valid nor viable and thus resists any effort at achieving racial equality or efforts at maintaining racial equality as an appropriate societal or cultural goal or aim.

We can disagree without becoming disagreeable or we can agree to disagree. Either way, we can, and must, remain respectful and civil toward one another or the discussion goes nowhere.