John Butler—the program chair and the head of a Catholic high school in Washington—opened the program, stating that “racism equals prejudice plus power.” I had never heard that formulation before. “I think racism is hatred toward other races, and don’t think power, whatever that is, has anything to do with it,” I told Butler after the meeting. “You can disagree all you want but that’s what racism is,” he said. I wondered who gave him the final word on the matter. Such insistence on being right was hard for me to stomach; this was a demand for acquiescence.
