I think, as per your earlier post about Obama, you're still taking much too narrow a view of power and privilege. While concentration of political power in South Africa has shifted away from the country's white minority, black South Africans are still considerably more likely to live in poverty:thesoretoothsayer wrote:Here's an example of the problem with the "racism = prejudice + power" thing.
South Africa, prior to 1994, was an apartheid state where whites had political, cultural and economic hegemony. Since 1994 blacks hold political and cultural power and economically whites, whilst still prominent, no longer have hegemony.
According to the "old" (real) definition of racism if a white South African called a black guy a "dirty kaffir" it would be racist speech both prior and after 1994. According to the "new" definition of racism this would not be a racist utterance post 1994.
Of course, you can argue that South Africa is a special case but if you need to qualify and contextualise a definition it's probably not much of a definition.
https://qz.com/africa/1061461/post-apar ... liberated/
While the wealthiest individuals still come from the country's white minority:
https://businesstech.co.za/news/wealth/ ... te-wealth/
This is all to be expected in a country that had an institutionalised race-based power differential at its heart until a generation ago: history lingers, and the fallout of the past doesn't simply vanish overnight. Nonetheless, it's true that South Africa's demographics and post-Apartheid political realignment make it a very different case to the US or Australia, and that the notion of who is privileged and who is disadvantaged may be rather more complicated and situational there. Most likely, the answer to your hypothetical is that racist slurs directed at black South Africans retain a capacity to harm, but that racism against white South Africans has potentially become more of a serious concern than it once was.
By the way, I should also note that there's nothing new about this understanding of racism; it's been discussed nearly since the term first entered common usage. To make the point more generally, consider the very first statement in Article 1 of the 1965 UN convention on the elimination of racial discrimination:
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalIn ... /CERD.aspx
If racism were then simply a matter of what you call the "old/real" definition, the sentence above could have comfortably ended before the bolded section began. But note what that section indicates: that it was not just an abstract concept of racial discrimination that the UN was concerned with, but rather one that had the capacity to cause significant harm to a person. That requires context, and I think the implication is clear there that the context being described in this document was one of inequality.In this Convention, the term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.
