However, although race can serve to achieve various objectives, it can also
serve as an excuse for personal failure. In a 1993 Gallup poll, 93 percent of
Americans with European ancestry and 95 percent of Americans with
African ancestry believed that people use racial discrimination as an excuse
for their own shortcomings. ⁴ Thus, in a society as complex and diverse as
the United States, race and racism mean different things to different indi-
viduals and groups.

Racism is generally defined in negative terms. It is viewed as any hostile ac-
tion or belief that subordinates an individual or group based on readily ob-
servable physical characteristics such as skin color. A racist ideology, or set
of beliefs, encompasses five false assumptions. First is that some groups of
people, erroneously defined as "races," are physically superior to others.
The second assumption is that some races are more intelligent than others.
A third belief is that race and culture are inseparable. The fourth is that
race determines personality. The final assumption of racist ideology, that
racial mixing lowers the biological quality of superior races, is based on the
myth of racial purity. ⁵ Racists, then, focus on observable differences to ex-
clude others regarded as inferior from access to power, position, and
wealth. Racism may be practiced by institutions, groups, or individuals. It
has been argued that "whatever black people may do in the way of a racist
response, there is no such thing as black racism." ⁶ However, given their
common humanity, all Americans, including black Americans, can be vic-
tims as well as perpetrators of racism.

Significant changes in American racial beliefs have complicated race rela-
tions. Although many problems are often portrayed in terms of race, the re-
ality is much more complex. A person who might oppose busing to achieve
racially integrated schools might also be a strong proponent of racially inte-
grated neighborhoods and workplaces. Opposition to busing can be based
on many considerations that have very little to do with race. Furthermore,
racial positions are not always fixed and can change depending on the is-
sues and interests involved. People are complex and can hold both racist
and antiracist views simultaneously; they may discriminate in some situa-
tions and strongly oppose discrimination in others. These apparent contra-
dictions not only reflect major changes in race relations in recent years but
also suggest that more positive, less blaming, and less confrontational ap-
proaches to racial conflicts might be more constructive than most contem-
porary methods of addressing racial differences.

A racial prism makes it easier to view almost any conflict between differ-
ent peoples as racism or any action that gives people of minority races an
advantage over whites as reverse racism, without much consideration of

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