How do you explain power+prejudice?

[Anakin McFly]

Got caught up in a discussion of racism on Reddit regarding its definition of 'prejudice+power', where I'm being asked to prove "how you know whether anyone has power or not. What determines this, etc."

The only answer I have is "you just know", but this is clearly unsatisfactory and they do not in fact seem to know.

[Raxivace]

Power is the ability to control the actions of others, and who has power depends on the context of the situation. A judge, for an extreme but obvious example, has power afforded to him by the state to send people to jail or whatever.

If this Reddit person can't understand such a simple concept then you might be better off talking to someone who doesn't have their head in the sand.

[Anakin McFly]

In this instance he's asking how we determine how a particular race has power. The discussion ("can black people be racist") hinges on the assumption that black people in the US lack power as a race, which is what he's challenging, saying stuff like how the US just had a black president, and has many black congressmen, mayors, police officers and so on, and some cities have a black majority. At what point can we thus say that racial power has balanced out, or in certain areas shifted to black people?

He's arguing that systemic racism therefore does not exist. It seems self-evident to me that it does, but it's proving hard to actually explain that objectively. I've been going with socioeconomic status, positions of authority and majority numbers, but that's not quite it.

[CashRules]

A. Those U.S. cities with a black majority have a POOR black majority. This fact supports the idea of systemic racism rather than disproving it.

B. It seems likely you are talking to a Vegas -type "I can't be a racist because I have black friends." asshat. There's nothing you can say to someone that dimwitted that will be useful at all. You'll only frustrate yourself in the process.

[Anakin McFly]

He just added "...women aren't oppressed. Men and women both have advantages and disadvantages in different situations."

and then this analogy:

The fact that people do X thing doesn't mean it's automatically racism or sexism or whatever other bias. For example, the fact that more people like dogs than cats doesn't mean people are discriminating against cats. People who like dogs generally relate more to their behaviors, while cat people relate more to cat behaviors. It's just not as simple as "There are more dog owners than cat owners, therefore cats are being oppressed."

Yeah, this discussion isn't worth it.

The weird thing is he's gay and has mentioned being subject to homophobia (part of his argument that even white guys like him aren't spared from irrational attacks), so I'd expect him to at least have some awareness of how systemic biases work.

[Cassius Clay]

Vegas??...I haven't heard that name is years...

[BruceSmith78]