text: define racism....look further everyone....i don't want black/white answers.? immigration...on every ones mind and the news, unfortunately i fell into the "calling everyone else a rascist" trap.  so my question is "what is the true definition of a racist?"  maybe....i need to learn from those who have something viable to offer....so educate me!  quick note:  my daughter just walked in and read my question..she quickly quipped...."if martin luther king jr. was alive you wouldn't have to ask that mama...and then promptly left the room." edit to sqwirlsgirl: i tried to send you a message to thank you for the very nice remark, offer to reply any doubts / or exchange ideas and to burry the hatchet. unfortunately ya said you must confirm your e-mail address first (i think you do this by editing your profile). peace. end of edit    edit to ku lok´s answer:   at first i agreed with what ku lok said, but didn´t quite grasp how that would help define racism. since he makes such an important point and (for me) takes a new approach to racism, but doesn´t make it clear, i´ve decided to add this edit to underscore his observations (which would easily fit as one of my "lose thoughts" below.   if a white (or non minority) does an act that may be construed as racism, someone might take advantage of that and play the race card. others that go along, believing it to be racists without getting to all the facts correctly are themselves being racists. to use one of his examples, if he takes a managemant decision to promote a white person or fire a black on, it could be because of racism or not. to suppose it is, is a racist interpretation of the fact: "he´s white, therefore that decision was probably because he´s racist" or "he wouldn´t have fired thompson if he were white". how can you possibly know that? how manny people even bother looking for the whole facts before making up there minds?   ps: i don´t get the anger towards airforce1989´s answer and it seemed that the bashing was uncalled for. the question should stand on its own and people don´t have any obligation other than try to give an honest answer to the question that was posted, which she did. at most, you could only expect that the answerer take the forum into account, anything other than that is completely optional. imho   end of edit ------------------------------------------   this is such a complicated issue. before i posted the answer i wrote, i read some of the others and found most questions focus on negative racism but almost completely disregard positive racism. although it doesn´t seem as bad, you must remember that the negative only exists because od the positive.  here are some lose thoughts on this subject: 1) any kind of pre-evaluation based solely on racial characteristics.  for example: "jose is mexican so he must be illegal (or lazy)" and "thompson is black so he´s likely to do drugs" are obviuos cases of racism. but, "this thompson is really amazing, having become a harvard lawyer being black and all" and "it´s really nice to see how jose is good in math, since you´d might expect that he didn´t have very good schools down in mexico" are also very racists because you automatically suppose they weren´t rich spoiled kids from belair or something.   2) other obvious are "he´s black so must be good in basketball" or "ask her the answer because she´s korean".   3) sometimes it´s not verbalised but can show as a pattern. i have a jewish friend who would alway speak positively of any other jew. if we were talking about the business´s managers, he would trash most of them, except the really good ones and the jewish ones. if we were talking about the sexy film stars, he would always praise the jewish a little higher. it bacame annoying once you got on to it. i think that is racism.   4) unequal employment opportunities are also obvious.   5) a fine line: i´m white and the only black female actresses i feel sexually atracted to are hale barry and tandy newton (arguably "whitenned" to fit hollywood´s standards). is that racism? i think so. lets put it another way. would i ever treat two female co-workers (one white and one black) differently? no. would i be equally likely to befriend them? i believe so. would i feel equally sexually atracted to the black one (given she was as atractive)? so far, i have never even felt that attraction. is that racism? i´m sure it 