The answer depends almost entirely on which definition of “racism” you use, and that disagreement over definitions is itself one of the best-studied aspects of the debate. Under the everyday definition most people carry around, racism means holding negative attitudes or behaving with prejudice toward someone because of their race. By that standard, decades of psychological research confirm that members of every racial and ethnic group can and do develop biases against people outside their group. Under a narrower academic definition that became prominent in sociology and critical race studies, racism requires not just prejudice but institutional or systemic power to enforce it, which changes the answer considerably. Both frameworks describe real phenomena, but they describe different things, and most of the heat in public arguments comes from people talking past each other because they are using different definitions without realizing it.
Two Definitions That Talk Past Each Other
The colloquial definition of racism is broad: any prejudice, hostility, or discrimination directed at someone because of their race. Under this framework, a person of any background who dislikes, stereotypes, or mistreats someone else on the basis of race is being racist. This is the definition most people use in everyday conversation, and it maps onto the way psychologists study prejudice in the lab.
The structural definition is narrower. It frames racism as a system in which racial prejudice is reinforced by institutional power: laws, economic structures, policing, lending practices, and other levers that historically advantaged white populations in countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa. Under this framework, prejudice held by a person who belongs to a group without access to those levers is still prejudice, but it is not “racism” in the technical sense because it lacks the institutional machinery to produce widespread, systematic harm. Proponents of this view often use the shorthand “prejudice plus power.”
Research on how Black and white Americans perceive racism helps explain why these two camps struggle to communicate. Studies have found that much of the disagreement stems from differing lay intuitions about what behaviors and attitudes count as racism, different comparison standards for judging racial progress, and different interpretations of what successful Black individuals signal about the state of racial equality.1Social and Personality Psychology Compass. Group‐based Differences in Perceptions of Racism: What Counts, to Whom, and Why? In other words, the dispute is not just philosophical. People literally see different evidence when they look at the same social landscape, and that shapes whether they think the word “racism” should apply broadly or narrowly.
Neither definition is objectively wrong. They are tools built for different jobs. The structural definition is useful for analyzing policies and institutions. The individual definition is useful for understanding interpersonal behavior and psychology. Problems arise when someone uses one definition to dismiss evidence that only makes sense under the other.
Everyone Forms In-Group Biases
If the question is whether people of color are psychologically capable of racial prejudice, the evidence is not ambiguous. One of the most replicated findings in social psychology is that human beings consistently favor their own group and view outsiders with more suspicion, less empathy, and less generosity. This pattern appears across cultures, age groups, and social settings. A large body of research on intergroup bias has documented both in-group favoritism, where people give preferential treatment to their own group, and out-group derogation, where people actively downgrade outsiders. Multiple motivational theories help explain the pattern, including the drive for social identity, the desire to reduce uncertainty, and the need for a sense of belonging.2PubMed. Intergroup bias
These biases are not confined to majority-group members. Experimental work using minimal groups, where people are sorted into arbitrary categories with no real-world significance, shows that even members assigned to a minority-status group discriminate against outsiders. In one study, people placed in a minority group actually discriminated more when they were made accountable to the out-group, suggesting that perceived vulnerability or threat can amplify bias rather than suppress it.3Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Outgroup Accountability in the Minimal Group Paradigm: Implications for Aversive Discrimination and Social Identity Theory The takeaway from this line of research is that in-group favoritism and out-group hostility are basic features of how human cognition handles group membership. They are not caused by holding institutional power, though institutional power can amplify their consequences.
Prejudice Between Minority Groups
One of the clearest demonstrations that people of color can hold and act on racial prejudice is the extensive research on inter-minority conflict. This is prejudice that flows between minority communities themselves, bypassing white populations entirely. It has been documented in dozens of countries and across a wide range of ethnic combinations.
A systematic review of inter-minority contact research found that while positive, cooperative contact between minority groups reduced prejudice and increased support for policies benefiting the other group, negative contact reliably worsened intergroup tensions. This pattern held in both adolescent and adult samples.4International Journal of Intercultural Relations. A blind spot in intergroup contact: A systematic review on predictors and outcomes of inter-minority contact experiences The review described inter-minority prejudice as a “blind spot” in the broader intergroup contact literature, partly because so much research has focused on majority-minority dynamics and overlooked the friction that occurs between disadvantaged groups.
Psychologists have also documented a pattern called horizontal hostility, where members of one minority group express prejudice specifically toward a similar but slightly more mainstream minority group. In one set of studies, members of three Jewish congregations ranging from Orthodox to Reform each looked down on the congregation that was one step closer to the mainstream. The researchers argued this happens because people value their minority identity and feel threatened by groups that seem to dilute or compromise that identity by being closer to the majority.5Journal of Social Issues. Horizontal Hostility; Relations Between Similar Minority Groups Follow-up research replicated the pattern among minority political parties in Greece, among vegetarians evaluating vegans, and among students at smaller colleges evaluating more mainstream universities. When the mainstream majority was made salient, the effect intensified: minority group members became more hostile toward the similar group that was closer to the mainstream.6Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. Horizontal Hostility: Multiple Minority Groups and Differentiation from the Mainstream
These are not just abstract lab findings. In real schools and workplaces, inter-minority prejudice shapes how people are treated. Research at a New York City public school found that teachers and counselors, in a school that was predominantly Black, endorsed a form of the model-minority stereotype. They believed African-immigrant culture promoted high educational aspirations, while African American culture encouraged oppositional attitudes toward academic success.7Teachers College Record. “Africans Do Not Fail”: Examining the Model Minority Stereotype and Anti-Blackness at a New York City Public School This kind of within-community stereotyping complicates the idea that only the majority group can be a source of racial bias.
Anti-Asian Prejudice During the Pandemic
The surge in anti-Asian hostility during the COVID-19 pandemic provides a particularly visible case study. Research on California counties found that anti-Asian hate crimes were most likely in areas with higher COVID case rates and where a dominant white majority coexisted with a substantial Asian population.8Race and Justice. Public Health Crisis, Racial Demographics, and Anti-Asian Hate in California That finding points to white-majority contexts as a primary driver. But surveys of the broader population told a more complicated story.
A large national survey of over 3,100 non-Asian respondents found anti-Asian prejudicial attitudes were widespread, and people who expressed greater fear of the pandemic tended to report more negative attitudes toward Asian Americans. The same study noted significant racial differences in these patterns, meaning the prejudice was not confined to any single racial group. Among Asian respondents, more than a third reported direct bias victimization during the pandemic, and more than half knew someone who had been victimized.9PubMed Central. Anti-Asian Xenophobia, Hate Crime Victimization, and Fear of Victimization During the COVID-19 Pandemic The pandemic made anti-Asian sentiment more visible, but it also revealed that such sentiment existed across demographic lines, not solely within the white majority.
Internalized Racism Is a Different Phenomenon
One form of racial bias that people of color uniquely experience is internalized racism, the absorption of negative stereotypes, beauty standards, or beliefs about inferiority that originate in a racist society and become part of a person’s own self-concept. This is not the same as being “racist against other races.” It is prejudice turned inward, directed at one’s own racial group or at oneself.
Internalized racism has been defined as the internalization of beliefs rooted in racism and colonization that lead a person to accept negative messaging or stereotypical misrepresentations about their own group’s worth and ability. It is consistently associated with psychological distress in racially diverse populations.10PubMed Central. Internalized Racism and Mental Health: The Moderating Role of Collective Racial Self-Esteem A systematic review of the psychological literature found that research attention on internalized racism has been increasing, with new scales being developed to measure it and growing evidence linking it to depression, anxiety, and other mental health outcomes.11Journal of Social Issues. Internalized Racism: A Systematic Review of the Psychological Literature on Racism’s Most Insidious Consequence
Longitudinal work with African American young adults has found that specific forms of internalized racism, such as the desire to alter physical appearance to conform to white beauty standards, the internalization of negative stereotypes about one’s group, and dissatisfaction with natural hair texture, predicted later psychological distress. But the relationship was not straightforward. It depended on how central race was to a person’s identity and what kind of racial ideology they held. For some people, a strong, positive racial identity buffered the effects; for others, certain identity configurations actually made internalized racism more damaging.12PubMed Central. The Associations Between Internalized Racism, Racial Identity, and Psychological Distress
Internalized racism matters here because it is sometimes confused with the broader question. When someone asks whether people of color can be racist, they sometimes mean “can they hold anti-Black or anti-Brown attitudes?” Internalized racism shows that, yes, members of a stigmatized group can absorb the very prejudices aimed at them. But this is a product of living inside a racist system, not evidence that the person holds institutional power. The structural and individual definitions of racism point in opposite directions when interpreting the same behavior.
How Families Pass Along Racial Attitudes
Racial prejudice does not appear out of nowhere. It is taught, modeled, and reinforced within families and communities, and this process occurs in communities of color just as it does in white families. Research on ethnic-racial socialization, the messages parents send their children about race, shows that the content varies across racial groups but the mechanism is universal.
A study of undocumented Latinx parents found that they used more “promotion of mistrust” messages, essentially warnings about other racial groups, compared to documented Latinx parents. While these messages likely reflect real experiences with discrimination and vulnerability, they also carried a cost: higher levels of mistrust messages were associated with increased depressive symptoms in adolescents.13Developmental Psychology. Illuminating Ethnic-Racial Socialization Among Undocumented Latinx Parents and Its Implications for Adolescent Psychosocial Functioning This research does not suggest those parents are wrong to be cautious, but it illustrates how racial attitudes, including suspicion and hostility toward other groups, get transmitted to the next generation regardless of the family’s racial background.
The parallel process happens in the other direction too. Research on how majority-group members perceive immigrants found that when immigrants expressed a desire for intercultural contact, they received significantly more favorable attitudes from host-country residents. Immigrants perceived as wanting to keep to themselves provoked more hostility.14Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. The role of immigrant acculturation preferences and generational status in determining majority intergroup attitudes Prejudice, in other words, is a dynamic loop between groups, not a one-way street flowing from the powerful to the powerless.
Why the “Power” Requirement Is Contested
The prejudice-plus-power definition has real intellectual substance. It was developed to capture something that individual-level definitions miss: the difference between a prejudiced thought and a prejudiced system. A landlord who will not rent to Black tenants is doing something qualitatively different from a person who privately dislikes their neighbor. The structural definition asks us to focus on who has the ability to translate prejudice into widespread, institutional harm.
But the framework has limits that its critics, including many scholars of color, have pointed out. First, it implies a binary between “powerful” and “powerless” that does not match reality. People hold different amounts of power in different contexts. A Black police officer, a Latino school principal, a Korean shop owner in a predominantly Black neighborhood: each occupies a position where their racial attitudes can translate into real consequences for others. The question “who has power?” rarely has a single answer.
Second, the structural definition can inadvertently minimize real harm. When a South Asian student is bullied by Black classmates using racial slurs, or when an elderly Asian man is attacked by a non-white assailant, the victim experiences something that looks, feels, and functions like racism. Telling them it does not qualify because their attacker lacked systemic power is an argument about vocabulary, not about their experience. Critics argue that reserving the word “racism” exclusively for structural dynamics leaves no adequate language for these interpersonal harms.
Third, the framework was originally developed to describe racial dynamics in the United States and a handful of other Western nations. It translates poorly to contexts where power hierarchies are organized differently. Inter-ethnic violence in Rwanda, caste-based discrimination in South Asia, and ethnic tensions between minority communities in European cities all involve racial or ethnic prejudice without mapping neatly onto a white-nonwhite power axis.
Contact Between Groups Reduces Prejudice in Everyone
If the question shifts from “can people of color be racist?” to “what actually reduces prejudice across all groups?”, the evidence is encouraging. Two meta-analyses drawing on data from nearly 64,000 respondents across 19 countries found that intergroup contact was reliably associated with reduced prejudice and increased positive attitudes toward out-groups. The effect held in both Western and non-Western societies, among both advantaged and disadvantaged group members, and in both one-time snapshots and studies that followed people over time.15PubMed. Intergroup contact is reliably associated with reduced prejudice, even in the face of group threat and discrimination
Perhaps most strikingly, the prejudice-reducing effect of contact was just as strong among people who perceived high levels of threat from other groups as among those who perceived low threat. The same held for people who reported experiencing discrimination. In other words, contact works even among people who might seem least receptive to it. This finding held for both majority-group and minority-group members, reinforcing the point that prejudice reduction is relevant across racial lines, not only for white populations.
Research on inter-minority contact specifically echoes this pattern. Positive, cooperative contact between different minority groups reduced prejudice and increased willingness to support policies that benefit the other group. Negative or hostile contact, by contrast, made inter-minority tensions worse.16International Journal of Intercultural Relations. A blind spot in intergroup contact: A systematic review on predictors and outcomes of inter-minority contact experiences The implication is straightforward: if you want to reduce prejudice between, say, Black and Latino communities, or between Asian and Black communities, the same tools that work for majority-minority prejudice, cooperative interaction on equal footing, apply just as well.
When the Vocabulary Fight Obscures the Real Questions
A recurring frustration for people on all sides of this debate is the feeling that the argument over whether to call something “racism” has replaced the argument over what to do about it. Someone who uses the structural definition and someone who uses the individual definition can agree on every empirical fact, on every piece of evidence reviewed above, and still end up in a shouting match because they have assigned different meanings to a single word.
The research literature has increasingly tried to bypass this impasse by using more precise terminology. “Internalized racism” describes the absorption of anti-group prejudice by group members themselves. “Horizontal hostility” captures prejudice between minority groups of similar status. “Inter-minority prejudice” covers bias that flows between disadvantaged communities without involving the majority at all. “Structural racism” or “systemic racism” specifies the institutional kind. Each term picks out a real phenomenon without requiring everyone to agree on whether the word “racism” by itself should be broad or narrow.
For the person asking whether people of color can be racist, here is what the evidence supports without any definitional ambiguity: people of color can hold negative racial attitudes, act on those attitudes in harmful ways, internalize racial hierarchies, and perpetuate prejudice against both other minority groups and their own communities. Whether you label all of that “racism” or reserve that word for something more specific is a question about language, not about psychology. The behaviors, the biases, and their consequences exist regardless of what you call them.