LogFAQs > #886368809

What is racism? It's the power to delineate and exclude certain groups of human beings... and it's intimately tied with the power to discriminate.

First of all, "races" aren't a thing. They don't exist. The idea of biological races is archaic pseudoscience. Here's a piece by Dr. Jefferson Fish, a Professor Emiritus with 12 books on the subject, on why races don't actually exist:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/looking-in-the-cultural-mirror/201109/the-main-reason-races-don-t-exist

So what is "race?" It's a social construct. Who constructs it and why? People in power do, in order to delineate and include/exclude people. What do I mean by including/excluding? I mean including/excluding people from the rights and protections the state purportedly ensures for everyone, equally.

"Oh, but I advocate for equal rights." Well, of course you do. The question is the long list of exceptions, all of the "buts"...

"All people are equal, but some are more equal than others" -- Some people can be shot extrajudicially, excluded physically, left to die, expelled...

"I'm not a racist, I have many Black friends" -- Do you want Blacks on the whole to have the same status in society as everyone else?

"Islamophobia isn't racism because Muslims aren't a race" -- Do you advocate excluding Muslims from our country, denying them a voice, and treating them as a threat?

Races don't exist (except as a social construct). Racism is about the power to impose this social construct and all its legal ramifications.