To the editor:

By definition, racism is a one-way street. Only white people are racists. Go to any dictionary and in some form, the definition of a racist refers only to the white population.

According to one source, “Systemic racism is premised on the claim that the United States was founded as a racist society, that racism is thus embedded in all social institutions, structures, and social relations within our country. Rooted in a racist foundation, systemic racism includes the complex array of antiblack practices, including the unjustly gained political-economic power of whites; the continuing economic and other resource inequalities along racial lines, and the organizations with racist ideologies and attitudes created to maintain and rationalize white privilege and power. Systemic here means that the core racist realities are manifested in each of society’s major parts: the economy, politics, education, religion, and the family reflect the fundamental reality of systemic racism — behaviors that give an unjust amount of resources, rights, and power to white people while denying them to people of color.”

Whether one agrees with that description or not, it generally describes the belief that the white race is automatically racist in the minds of many American individuals, institutions or groups. Researched-based conclusions demonstrate that a majority of university educators regard that doctrine to be true. Most black leaders, professed liberal politicians and their voters, and many left-leaning members of the media proclaim racism is attributed only to the white race. In general, conservative values are mocked and ridiculed by elite liberals and “progressives.” Their beliefs indict common people who care more about living lives of value without engaging in the internecine war of the races with those who make racial inequities a life’s work.

What troubles me is that white people are assumed to be racist by those who make that claim, without the accusers knowing anything about a particular white individual; of the beliefs and practices of ordinary white Americans, who do not take to the streets in protests; being unaware of quiet contributions or other support of minorities by whites; nor of any encouragement or kindnesses that many white people have, without fanfare, shared with people identified as minorities.

As I observe our culture today, of greater consequence is the divisive hatred that has permeated our society and corrupted social relations, particularly in the hallowed Halls of Congress. Hate has no color. Hatred crosses all races and creeds.

Do all African-Americans adhere to the words of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, that “the white man is our mortal enemy and we cannot accept him. I will fight to see that vicious beast go down in the lake of fire prepared for him …”? I doubt a majority of black Americans would be comfortable with that hate-mongering rhetoric.

Do all white Americans agree with white supremacy, the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them? I doubt that as well.

I fear that the insidious hatred of blacks against blacks; whites against whites; and blacks against whites, and whites against blacks (as well as other minorities) is so embedded in our culture that, as Lincoln noted, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedoms it will be because we have destroyed ourselves from within.”

Jim Brunnemer, Nashville