Just to be clear: no, Black people *cannot* be racist.

Black people do not (materially and in the aggregate) benefit from anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and systemic racism. Black people also do not benefit from discrimination against other racial groups because other racial groups are also marginalized due to white supremacy.

While individual Black people may exhibit anti-Black ideas or behaviors, they cannot perform racism.

Think about it this way: disabled folx cannot be ableist because they do not benefit from systems that support able-bodied people. While they may participate in behaviors and acts that are harmful to disabled ppl, they do not have the power to improve their station from ableism.

We can all participate in systems that make our lives and the lives of others harder. But, we don't all benefit from that participation in the same ways.

That is why power+prejudice=racism. It requires the unearned benefit of whiteness.

What is often overlooked in the conversation about racism (and why everyone can't be racist) is the fact that race-making happens in a number of ways that has nothing to do with skin color.

Criminalization of poor people has a racial component rooted in white supremacy and fear of the other. *All* white people benefit from logics of criminality which center whiteness as good and all else as bad.

This is why (on average) Black people with college degrees still face economic conditions that match (or fall below) white Americans with a high school diploma. Participation in anti-Blackness greatly benefits white people on the whole. Whether they opt-in or not.

Using the word "racism" is not an issue of semantics. And, even though the term is overused, it *does* refer to actions and ideas that systematically disprivilege non-white people.

Why? Because we live in a world that was largely colonized by white imperialists.

The efforts to avoid the terms "racist" and "racism" seem to me to be more about absolving white people than identifying the root issues Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, and other folx at the margins of racial identity face today.

What we are not going to do though is turn the discussion on racism into a "who dunnit?" scavenger hunt. It's 2020 and I'm tired.

We already know who made racism and who benefits from it. We figured that out already. If y'all don't stop.

Also, let's be clear here: the only time people are like "wait, can Black people be racist, too?" is when they already have to be held accountable for some regular-exactly-the-definition-of-racism racism.

Let's stay focused.