As someone who is mixed race — half black, half white — I’ve never thought of myself as racist. 

In the fall, a discussion at lunch centered around a student who brought a gun to school. I made a comment about how that has become relatively normal in America, largely due to the number of white males who decide to shoot up schools. 

A white person said I was being hypocritical, saying that I was always calling people out for doing or saying racist things, and here I was being racist toward white people. 

I was dumbfounded. Not only was I being accused of racism, but was accused of racism toward a majority group. 

I will admit that I have occasionally said things that may have seemed out of line or inherently bigoted even though I’m half white, but I don’t have the power to be racist toward a majority group.

The term “racism” includes things such as bigotry and prejudice, but it’s so much more than that. Racism is also the systemic oppression that comes along with that bigotry and prejudice. 

That’s not a problem white people face. 

So while a person of color can be bigoted towards white people, they can’t be racist towards them because there’s no way they benefit from doing so. White people directly benefit from the exclusion and mistreatment of people of color, even if they don’t want to.

Another aspect of racism that people often get confused about is discrimination. When people of color say they’re tired of being discriminated against, it’s regarding being treated as less than white people simply due to skin color. 

There are those who say that people of color having months dedicated to their history is racist because it’s exclusionary. The same is said about historically black colleges or BET, the Black Entertainment Television channel.

There isn’t a white history month because every month is white history month. There isn’t a white entertainment television channel because there’s no lack of white people in TV. 

The reason we have history months for P.O.C. and a television channel devoted to black entertainment is to create a safe space for people of color in a society where they’re commonly underrepresented in history lessons and TV shows. 

While people of color aren’t always innocent when it comes to bigotry, think twice before telling them that they’re being racist towards a white person. 

Because that’s impossible.