IIUC, we're actually in agreement: you, me, and the activists who identified institutional racism, which happens on the scale of a culture or society, as opposed to racial prejudice, which happens on a personal level.
Never mind quibbling over terminology - it's this distinction which is important. A couple of times when I was at uni, I was hassled by Aboriginal kids, probably because I'm White; that's racial prejudice. The failure of government to provide basic health services to Indigenous people is institutional racism.
As the extract from Cultural Etiquette says, POC are entirely capable of prejudice, but have far less institutional power than White people: elected representatives, influential organisations, control of the media, cash, etc. It's not impossible to imagine a situation where, say, Arabic Australians have some institutional power over Aboriginal Australians, but surely this is going to be very slight in comparison to the power Anglo-Celtic Australians have over both groups.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-01-19 11:41 am (UTC)Never mind quibbling over terminology - it's this distinction which is important. A couple of times when I was at uni, I was hassled by Aboriginal kids, probably because I'm White; that's racial prejudice. The failure of government to provide basic health services to Indigenous people is institutional racism.
As the extract from Cultural Etiquette says, POC are entirely capable of prejudice, but have far less institutional power than White people: elected representatives, influential organisations, control of the media, cash, etc. It's not impossible to imagine a situation where, say, Arabic Australians have some institutional power over Aboriginal Australians, but surely this is going to be very slight in comparison to the power Anglo-Celtic Australians have over both groups.