>Others on the board are apt to be a lot more vicious.

True. And, Chirp, realize that if people here are more vicious, it's because they have felt the effects of racism firsthand. I don't think that the "400 years of oppression mantra" is quite as immediately heartrending as the "here's what happened to me today because I'm black" story that everyone here has to tell. It's really true that someone who is not a member of an oppressed class can't ever experience fully what it means to be oppressed. Yeah, you can hang out with black friends and see the attitudes that get presented to them, but realize that if you're caucasian, your presence is going to impact those very attitudes. You just won't see the worst of it. You really won't see the reality.

It's also true that most people (not all) believe that the way to build is to reach a level in which all people are respected, so that the anger that you identify as racism may be best expressed in more inclusive terms. But put yourself in their shoes. When some stranger crowds in front of you when you're riding the Metro (or whatever -- fill in whatever your personal trigger is -- some people hate being crowded, other people hate it when someone uses their cell phone in public, but think about what really gets you mad when a stranger does it), you have an immediate emotional reaction. Now think about what it would feel like if that stranger was doing whatever it was that pissed you off intentionally, because they felt it was their right, with the blessings of society, and that for 400 years they had had legal protection for it and more -- murder included. Your emotional reaction is going to be multiplied 400 times, 4,000 times, because it's no longer random individual inconsideration from a stranger -- now it's systematic abuse of an entire people. So maybe you can generate some empathy and perhaps shoulder some of the responsibility for the anger that you're hearing expressed.

Also, I would just make a slight modification to the explanation of racism that thebigfunk presented. I think it might be misleading to say simply that it's about superiority. Perhaps it's clearer to say that it is an "attitude of superiority" or an assumption of privilege, but most people on this site will agree that in order to be racist, one must be a part of an oppressor group and one must direct one's attitudes toward an oppressed group. In other words, racism against "whites" doesn't exist because "whites" have never been an oppressed class in and of themselves.