From “Redefining Racism in the Tea Party Era“- Originally posted on The Grio

Recently, some among the Tea Party have declared that “racism” is not always a power relationship; but they are wrong. Racism is always about power. Racism and discrimination are structural (i.e. policy entrenched) barriers that inform actions that can systemically affect whole populations because of their perceived racial and ethnic affiliation. Specifically, “racism” is the negotiation between power and racial bias that shapes physical and social environments, and that determines whether opportunity is hampered or advanced. By definition, then, only those who have amassed full inclusion in the nation’s and world’s power structures can be called “racist.”

For example, a “racist” business model is one that targets African-American and Latino neighborhoods for predatory payday loans, deliberately and systematically trapping them in lending cycles that accumulate exorbitant fees that keep them trapped in poverty. A “racist” and “discriminatory” policy is one that validates the practice of criminalizing children of color (e.g., expulsion, arrest, incarceration, etc.) for abhorrent behaviors, while their white counterparts receive school-based counseling and other non-criminalizing interventions.

Bigotry and prejudice, on the other hand, are personal feelings that reflect a moral or spiritual poverty. Individual acts of bigotry and prejudice–as seen, for example, on political protest signs that hurl racial epithets–can drive the creation of the policy, but these are moral deficits more than they are “racist.” Though used interchangeably at times, bigotry and racism are not the same thing–even in a society struggling to redefine its relationship with the fluid and social nature of “race”…

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