Reddit reviews Racism: A Global Reader: A Global Reader (Sources and Studies in World History)

And here's the problem: race is such a huge, complicated social concept that there's a lot of academic disagreement about what constitutes race and racism. The disagreement we're having over semantics is a serious point of contention in academic discussions of race. Neither of us is truly 'right' in the sense that there is not an objective definition to go by here, and there rarely is in such issues (gender's another big one for this kind of argument). There are entire books written around basically what we're discussing right here, so framing the debate in terms of a 'mainstream' definition (itself a subjective category) misses the point somewhat. Restricting the definition to, say, the dictionary oversimplifies a massively complex issue and limits the dialogue.

I'd argue though, that using one definition does not cheapen another. So call it what you like, the issues I describe and the problems they create are still present and deserve to be addressed.