You are still correct, yes. Im not disputing that these hate groups exist. But being racist against white people doesn't really mean much when they still hold all of the institutional power. It's perfectly valid to feel threatened or upset by these groups that threaten you, but they are a small minority in a country that now has an open white supremacist appointed to a cabinet position in the white house and large, active groups of klans and neonazis. It's on a vastly different scale, and unlike white people, people of color are in danger every day for being who they are. Being attacked or discriminated against for your whutenrss in any meaningful way is very unlikely compared to the experiences a person of color faces in this country. (I am assuming you are in us, but let me know if I'm wrong)

"...being racist against white people doesn't really mean much..."

In case you didn't know: these words incite hate towards a group of people based on their skin color. In other words, you are advocating racism. You've just exposed yourself as a racist.

I believe the parent is a proponent of the theory of racial relations that defines racism as "prejudice + power". I don't think I'm eloquent enough to sum up the idea, so here's a link to a paper that analyzes this proposed meaning among others: http://www.andover.edu/About/Newsroom/TheMagazine/Documents/...

It's not a useful redefinition. Certainly, degree of power affects the impact of racism, but there is always some power involved in any prejudice, and even prejudice by members of a generally disadvantaged group against members of a generally advantaged group will end up manifesting in contexts where the individuals involved are in different power relationships than the group power dynamics in the broader society would suggest.

In fact, the redefinition is often invoked to justify as not-racist acts that are racist even in terms of the redefinition when the context of the action is considered, because it's usually coupled with a misdirection about power relations in a different, usually broader, context than is relevant to the action in question.

Avoiding the redefinition entirely and talking about racial bigotry and the power relations which magnify it's impacts as distinct and interacting things, rather than trying to set an arbitrary standard of what degree of the latter is necessary for the former to deserve to be called racism is far more productive, if not as convenient for providing certain racists cover.

Why do the people trying to rearrange the meaning of the term "racism" always seem to also be racist in terms of the traditional meaning, which is discriminating against others based on race.

If

    racism = prejudice + power

then may still be possible for a local maxima of power to exist.

When a bunch of black power advocates beat a white person because nobody is around to stop them, they clearly show that they are the local maxima of power. Even if "systemic oppression" occurs as a global maxima, there is certainly a lot of variability of who's in power in the rest of the graph.