Racism

Commonly understood as race-based prejudice and discrimination, racism refers to a set of beliefs, narratives, and assumptions that perpetuate racial inequality. Racism holds that different races inherently possess different traits and capabilities that justify a hierarchy, or ranking of value, in which one race is superior and has disproportionate social, political, and economic power over other races. Racism manifests itself not only in an individual's actions or beliefs but through social institutions that perpetuate inequality and have historically enabled white supremacy to inform policy and permeate society.

In the twenty-first-century United States, the sociological definition of racism as "prejudice plus power" has become common shorthand among antiracism activists to contend that, regardless of the individual circumstances, members of the group...