Excerpt from Black Boy Poems by Tyson Amir

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Real Definition of Racism

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If you are interested in a more accurate definition of racism, then you must go to the good doctor. I defer to the definition by Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, who in The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors puts forth the best definition of racism I've ever studied. For those unfamiliar with Cress Welsing, she was a psychiatrist who specialized in creating a framework for combating white supremacy. She is famous for her work in this field and her other published works. Her two most popular publications are The Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism and The Isis Papers. 

 

According to the good doctor: "RACISM (white supremacy), is the local and global power system and dynamic, structured and maintained by persons who classify themselves as white, whether consciously or subconsciously determined, which consists of patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech, action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of people activity (economics, 

education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war); for the ultimate purpose of white genetic survival and to prevent white genetic annihilation on planet earth – a planet upon which the vast majority of people are classified as non-white (black, brown, red and yellow) by white skinned people, and all of the nonwhite people are genetically dominant (in terms of skin coloration) compared to the genetic recessive white skin people.” 

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This is what the Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Oxford English Dictionary are for some reason reluctant to or unable to say. Cress Welsing’s definition allows one to fully see the extent of the racial apparatus at work in the United States and globally. This definition also demonstrates that racism is not a one-to-one matter, which is a common misnomer. Yes, a person can engage in racist activity, but racism, i.e., a system based on race, constructed by a people who call themselves white and imbue their color with characteristics of superiority, is only possible through violent systemic power. To state it another way, racism is the systematic empowerment and the institutional advancement of white society over the systematic/institutional degradation and disenfranchisement of all other communities of color, especially Black, in all areas of human interaction or "people activity.”