what most people call racism is a form of bigotry. in this case what they are talking about is discrimination, hate speech, and hate action based on the socially derived construct of race. what race has been throughout the ages has changed. but some contributing factors to race are phenotype (skin tone, bone structure, hair color, eye color, other physical attributes), national identity, language spoken, and religious practice. in our current age of scientific racism, the most common factors for discrimination on race are phenotype and familial belonging through genetics.

racism is influenced by bigotry, but does not require bigotry to sustain itself. usually racism is established through bigotry and then maintained through access to capital. what racism is is structural social imbalance based on race. racism requires a power shructure that favors one group based on the socially derived construct of race at the expense of another, or multiple other, groupings.

one of the most common misconceptions is that whiteness is determined by skin tone. it is not. whiteness is access to privelege in a color-coded racist society. let’s start by using the racist structure that’s most familiar to me to explain. i live in the so-called united states. i have always live in majority minority neighborhoods. the fact that this is even possible, for me to have lived my entire life in majority minority neighborhoods, suggests a problem. my current neighborhood, my neighbors are all pale. they are, however, not white. they don’t get to be white because the primary determinant of whiteness in the so-called united states because they have accents and dress a little bit differently. for this, the determiners of whiteness, the police, harass them. in otherwords, the police use their access to violence to maintain a racial hierarchy that my neighbors don’t get to benefit from because they’re not white, they’re pale.

this is what is meant when people say “you can’t be racist against white people.” if you could, that would mean they’re not white, because racism requires you having access to privelege in a racial hierarchy and whiteness is who benefits from that. you can be biggoted against white people. and in fact white people with proximity to poverty frequently endure bigotry for not performing whiteness correctly. often, because they’ve grown up in majority minority neighborhoods and have picked up social behaviors from people who do not get to be white, be that how they talk, how they dress, or even how the approach problem solving. if you’ve ever heard the term “white trash” you’ve heard a slur for poor white people that often the people around them take more offense to than they do.