Saying it's all institutional racism can ignore other issues at play that can be more readily solved (because I don't know if you noticed but just about everyone agrees racism is bad, and have agreed for the past decade, and yet these issues aren't much closer to being solved). For example: living in the inner city is bad for you. As in literally there is still higher concentrations of lead in the environment which lead to higher incidence rates of developmental problems.
This is awful, I agree. The question is whether it is racism. And that depends on the definition. This is just a question of "this word can be used in subtly different ways," that's all. Prejudice against white people on the part of PoC, and violence based on that prejudice - nobody's denying that this exists, that it is wrong, that the criminals should be punished. It's just that some people don't define that as "racism".
If that is the case, those people are foolish. How is targeting someone specifically for their race not racism?
The way I hear it - and by 'the way I hear it', I mean literally what people in person tell me when I ask, including members of my family - is that racism has to be systemic and have institutional power behind it. It has to be prevailing, rather than an exception, or something.
I find that to be bullshit personally. 'Don't punch down' is a rather poor philosophy. I much prefer 'don't punch people'.
The only examples of institutional racial prejudice are pro-color and pro-native american.
Affirmative Action, etc.
False. Like, actually a falsifiable statement. Particularly in regards to policing, or colleges (particularly Ivy League). And while it includes being pro-white people, somewhat, it's much more anti-Asian and pro-Jewish, if you compare their numbers to the rate of things like National Merit Scholarships, or CalTech, which bases their stuff almost entirely off of academic merit, rather than the generalized mumbo-jumbo of holistic applications.
Speaking of, were you aware that 'holistic applications' were first introduced into colleges in order to make their processes of application acceptancy more opaque and obscure, so that they could deny Jews, who were doing marvelously on the academic front, entry? And now that it's shifted around after a lot of effort by organizations trying to fight anti-semitism, a disproportional amount of college staff is Jewish (which means you're more likely to have a connection to someone in the college who can help you if you're Jewish; it has nothing in particular to do with being Jewish in itself). Meanwhile, Caucasians get in because they are the majority of the population, African-Americans, Hispanics, and Latino/as get in because of Affirmative Action, and Asians get shafted because they aren't colored/oppressed enough to be considered worthy of being championed, nor are they white enough to be recognized for their achievements on their own.
Literally 40% of National Merit Scholars are Asian. If I remember my source correctly, anyway. Half-Asian people applying to college are putting 'white' on their application much more frequently now than they used to.
EDIT: And once again LW and I are in sync from opposite directions
I think that it is possible that Loud whispers may be my non-evil twin. If only because my career goals largely amount to 'mad scientist' if you think about them.