Can Black People Be Racist?

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]Racism by definition to me and this is not just to me it's a grammatical thing right if you have a word that ends with ism and ism it is almost by definition two things an ideology and a system so you think of other examples communism socialism capitalism fascism these are ideologies they're ways of viewing the world seeing the world they're also ways of organizing it right as a system so at a systemic level people of color can't really effectively exercise racism. Now, at the ideological level, I will be more than happy for the sake of argument to say that at the ideological level, anybody can be racist. Anybody can have a racist belief. But it's like I can be a capitalist up here in North Korea, but I ain't getting very far with that, right? I can't actually effectuate my capitalist thinking into capitalism in practice. I could be a communist in a capitalist economy, but I'm not getting very far with that. It's sort of like, I guess the analogy I would use, if you have a stationary combustion engine and there's no fuel that's going to that engine to make it operate. It's still an engine, but it's not going to get you from point A to point B. Once you add the fuel to it is when it's operational.

[00:01:09]And so the fuel is equivalent to power, right? So I can say, yeah, okay, there might be such a thing as black racism as a stationary combustion engine that just sits there and sort of hurts your feelings, right? but it's not going to do very much to you because it doesn't have the power to do so. And that makes it qualitatively different and quantitatively different. Both of them may be equally objectionable. It might be just as immoral for a person of color to believe I'm inferior as it is for me to believe they're inferior. But a person of color who believes I'm inferior is not going to be the bank officer, is not going to be the employer, is not going to be the cop.

[00:01:44]I'm sure there are black cops that get tired of white spoiled college kids and high school students in privileged areas around the country, but they're not profiling them and they're not pulling them over out of the car and beating them with clubs and they're not shooting them by and large. So, in that regard, even if you have bigotry, prejudice, or what we could call racism, if you're a person of color, you are very limited in what you're able to get away with with that attitude. Whereas, white folks can take a pen and zone you out of existence, right? and and and bring in a a bulldozer to knock down your house.

[00:02:15]You know, black folks in Baltimore can get mad at white cops and throw some Molotov cocktails through the CVS and white Baltimore can come in and knock down entire black neighborhoods to make way for the interstate. Now, you tell me which one is more effective. It's pretty obvious, right? It's pretty obvious.