https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/03/05/lies-of-the-racism-industry-n1430366
Nothing has been more common during the last years than accusations of “racism.” President Biden has said that he is going to lead a “great battle…to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.” This great “anti-racism” crusade is not directed at anti-Semites who despise Jews and blame the ills of the world on them. Nor is it aimed at the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslims, who hate whites and especially Jews. Yet these cases would seem to qualify as racism. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “racism” as “Belief in superiority of a particular race; antagonism between different races.” The Random House Dictionary of the American Language defines “racism” as “a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.”
But contrary to common usage as specified in dictionaries, racism has been redefined by sociologists as “prejudice plus power,” so that only white people, who are falsely claimed to exclusively hold all of the power, can be said to be racist. This is convenient for the anti-racism industry, because once racism is so defined and white people identified as power-holders, then all whites are automatically white supremacists. Now a definition cannot be said to be a lie, because it is always an arbitrary investing of meaning in a word or phrase, but it can be said to be a novel usage, deviant from common understanding, and it can be identified as tendentious, aimed at advancing a presumed conclusion prejudicial to some party.