Originally Posted by dksuddeth

so an issue of my and my white professional colleagues denying a black man a sysadmin job would be racism, but andre and his homies spray painting 'cracker' on my car door is discrimination?

Originally Posted by filtherton

Well, like everything else, racism has an academic definition and a conventional one (though the academic definition is conventional for a lot of people). Racism, as defined by people who spend a lot of time thinking about it, is inextricably linked with societal power-- people without power can't be racist. Now, you may disagree with that definition, but in doing so you're really inadvertently losing the ability to talk about what makes discrimination by those in power against those without power so much more insidious than plane old racial discrimination (which is itself pretty insidious).

The expected outcome of members of race A actively discriminating against members of race B changes dramatically depending on whether or not race A has the institutional power to facilitate that discrimination. Power is relevant in discussions on race. If you pretend that it isn't, you miss out on a whole lot of the important details.

Nobody is saying that discrimination is great, just that it is the kind of thing that is informed by an awareness of social context. We probably won't ever achieve a colorblind society. We certainly won't achieve one if we don't allow ourselves to take a good honest look at how things are and how they got to be that way.