Why Race Reductionists Love a White Woman’s Idea that Racism is Power Plus Prejudice and Ignore Malcolm X’s

This was Malcolm X’s definition of racism:

“To me the earth’s most explosive and pernicious evil is racism, the inability of God’s creatures to live as One.” — Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Like everyone in his day, he knew that racism is prejudice based on race. That’s why he criticized black racists after he left the Nation of Islam:

“I totally reject Elijah Muhammad’s racist philosophy, which he has labeled ‘Islam’ only to fool and misuse gullible people, as he fooled and misused me. But I blame only myself, and no one else for the fool that I was, and the harm that my evangelic foolishness in his behalf has done to others.” —Malcolm X

But five years after his death, a white liberal, Pat Bidol, redefined racism in Developing New Perspectives on Race: “racism = prejudice + power”. Another white liberal, Judith H. Katz, popularized that equation in White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training. Bidol’s theory is that everyone is prejudiced, but only white people can be racist because racism requires prejudice plus power, and people of color do not have power in a racist society.

The problem with her theory is people like Condoleeza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, and Kimberlé Crenshaw have far more power than most people of any hue in the USA. Ron Kozar noted that by Bidol’s definition, “American Nazis aren’t racists, since…