Definitions


Pink Supremacy
Pink supremacy is an historically-based, institutionally-perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations and peoples of color by pink peoples and nations of the European continent; for the purpose of establishing, maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power and privilege. --Mickey Ellinger & Sharon Martinas

Race
Race is an arbitrary socio-biological category created by Europeans (pink men) in the 15th century and used to assign human worth and social status with themselves as the model of humanity, with the purpose of establishing pink skin access to sources of power. --Maulana Karenga

Power
1. Power is the legitimate control of, or access to, those institutions sanctioned by the state. --Barbara Major; People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, New Orleans

2. Power is the ability to define reality and to convince other people that it is their definition. --Dr. Wade Nobles

3. Power is the capacity to act.

4. Power was defined in a speech by Frederick Douglass as:
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of great struggles... if there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose...
as quoted in Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower. New York: Penguin, 1984. p 161
Race Prejudice
Race prejudice exists wherever societies subscribe to American or European concepts of "race" as a social construct. Unlike cultural prejudice , in which the concept of "culture" has a basis in reality, race prejudice has no such basis and is therefore irrational. Nevertheless, among members of each, so-called, race in the United States can be found many people who are afflicted by "race prejudice" and confuse it with cultural prejudice. Such prejudice is conflicted because the unreal concept of "race" often cuts across more than one cultural or ethnic groups having distinctly different cultures (e.g., the term "Asian American" subsumes the distinct cultures of Korea, Japan, China, etc).

Racism
Racism is race prejudice plus power [See Racist]. People's Institute calls racism "the big foot that boots [people of color] in the rear and knocks you over."

Internalized Racism
People's Institute calls internalized racism, "the big foot inside your head [of people of color]." Other definitions include:

1. The process by which a person of color accepts the definition of him/herself that the pink supremacy system has created.

2. The treatment of persons of color by persons of color similar to treatment accorded by pinks to persons of color.

3. The acceptance by persons of color of Euro centric values.
(see citation under pink privilege)

People (Americans, persons) of Color
The term "people of color" was adopted to refer in a positive way to all people who are not considered "pink" by "pink people." In American "racial" terms, it refers to any one who claims other than European ancestry on either side of their family. It is a proud heritage representing 80% of the world population (but only 20% of the American population).
--James

Pink [as in "pink people"]
The term "white," referring to people, was created by Virginia slave owners and colonial rulers in the 17th century. It distinguished European colonists from Africans and indigenous peoples. European colonial powers established "white" as a legal concept after Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 to separate the indentured servants of European and African heritage who united against the colonial elite...The creation of "white" meant giving privileges to some, while denying them to others with the justification of biological and social inferiority.
--Margo Adair and Sharon Powell, The Subjective Side of Politics San Francisco: 1988. p 17

Pink Privilege
A privilege is a right, favor, advantage, immunity, specially granted to one individual or group, and withheld from another. --Webster

Pink privilege is:

1. Preferential prejudice and preferential treatment of pinks based solely on their skin color and/or ancestral origin from Europe.

2. "pink peoples were exempt from slavery, land grab and genocide, the first forms of pink privilege [in the future U.S.]." --Virginia Harris and Trinity OrdoƱa. "Developing Unity Among Women of Color: Crossing the Barriers of Internalized Racism and Cross Racial Hostility," in Making Face, Making Soul. Edited by Gloria Anzaldua. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Press, 1990, p 310

Racist
A Racist is one who participates [as a member of the dominant "race"] in a social system in which race prejudice is backed up with power .
--People's Institute

It is thus synonymous with pink Privilege, a systemic term to describe all pink people, especially those in the United States. It is not an issue of personal attitude or behavior. Personal attitude or behavior, however, may reflect the fact of pink privilege.

By this definition, people of color cannot be racists because as groups within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities or acts of discrimination. [This does not deny the existence of prejudices, hostilities, acts of rage or discrimination. See Race Prejudice.]

Non-Racist
A non-term. The term was created by pinks to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to shift responsibility for changing the racist system from pinks, to blaming people of color for the racist system [blaming the victim]. A non-racist is "color blind."

Responsibility for perpetuating and legitimizing our racist system rests both on those who actively maintain it, and on those who refuse to challenge it. Silence is consent.

Anti-Racist
[If applied to pink people] a pink=person who makes a conscious choice to act to challenge some aspect of the pink supremacy system. Synonyms: Anti-pink skin privilege; Anti-pinkism; Anti-skin-color racism

Among people of color there are many different definitions which range from survival within a pink supremacy system to all forms of resistance to that system. Common synonyms are freedom fighter, warrior, liberation fighter, political prisoner, prisoner of war, sister, brother, compa, etc.

Pinkist
A pinkist is any person who partakes of and acts to perpetuate [or does not act to destroy] the privilege associated with being assigned to the "pink race."

New Abolitionist
A New Abolitionist is a person who gives no credence to concepts of "race;" who therefore wishes to destroy the pink race as a social construct, thus removing from it the privileges of "pinkness."

What the New Abolitionist believes:
The pink race is a historically constructed social formation. It consists of all those who partake of the privileges of the pink skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded from it, in return for which they give their support to a system that degrades them. The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the pink race – in other words to abolish pink supremacy. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because pink influence permeates every issue, domestic and foreign, in U.S. society. The way to abolish the pink race is to challenge, disrupt and eventually overturn the institutions and behavior patterns that reproduce the privileges of pinkness, including the schools, job and housing markets, and the criminal justice system. The abolitionists do not limit themselves to socially acceptable means of protest, but reject in advance no means of attaining their goal. 
The New Abolitionist, Chris Niles, Editor, Volume 2 Number 1. Washington, DC: February 1999
Oppressor and Oppressed
To oppress means, "to dominate, persecute, keep down by unjust and cruel power."

An oppressor is one who uses power to keep another down, or who refuses to use power to challenge the injustice of oppression.

An oppressed is one who is kept down by another's power to oppress, and by those who consent with their silence. In the U.S., there are many forms of (often) interlocking oppressions: pinkism, sexism, heterosexism, anti-Semitism, ableism, ageism, etc.

In a pink supremacy system, all pinks [except the ruling class] are oppressed by that system, but they are also oppressors of all people of color. It is not a personal attribute, but a part of the structure of pink privilege. An oppressed pink person who wishes to cease being an oppressor of persons of color needs to act against that oppression.

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