Over the years, theorists have debated the wisdom of defining racism in terms of the way it provides unequal access to social privilege or the levers of social power for those in the group at the top of the racial hierarchy.35 The authors in this volume who discuss the contours of racism all opt in favor of seeing privilege as the critical resource mediated in racist societies, defining racism as the ideology that operationalizes race in social institutions involving belief (whether conscious or unconsciously held) in the congenital superiority of one race over others, resulting in privilege
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