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Comment by burtonator | Hacker News Reader

It's also taboo for white people to call some non-white people racist but then we can't actually have a discussion about racism.

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My two cents here: non white people can certainly be racist, but racism is a structural thing, so it doesn't make sense to talk about racism by people that are not white, in the United States, since the structure isn't there. But I think it makes perfect sense to talk about it in other places.

So what is a dislike for another race called?

Bigotry.

In the context of disliking people from other countries, xenophobia.

Racism is a not a "structural thing", and neither is it about whites or non-whites.

Everywhere you go on Earth you will find racist people, whatever 'race' they are some will be racist against other 'races'.

Specifically regarding your point: there are people who are black and racist in the US or any other country.

Racism absolutely is a structural thing. This can include things such as redlining in the US or more on topic, Japanese banks refusing to work with foreigners and the treatment of the Ainu in Japan.

There's a very important distinction to make between those that write the laws and those that don't.

These are examples of the consequences of racism.

But racism does not start there.

I don't think the discussion was about the origins of racism, was it?

Racism builds systems of governing and laws that can be racist. Ergo, you see structural racism (again, redlining) which can exist long after the racial zeitgeist has passed.

But you have applied a predicate (ie. 'structural') to specify a kind of racism, implying the general form of racism, which is, simply put, any discrimination on the basis of race.

Yes, and? This was specifically in response to the denial that racism is not a structural thing, which we have objective historical examples of structural racism affecting different populations.

Ok, well, it seems we are in agreement.

As a non-white person in a white majority country, I can't wrap my head around thinking like this.

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