Thank you for taking the time to give a thoughtful, detailed reply. What you say has a lot of merit, and the truth of what you say is part of why I am putting my neck out there with this article. I don't think Black people are being absolved of anything, but to avoid that misinterpretation, we define our terms as I am trying to do.

There are two realities here. One, there is systemic institutional racism that benefits the dominant social group. Two, there are personal attitudes that may or may not be in line with the systemic institutional racism. Acknowledging those realities and expressing them as racism and bigotry or lack of bigotry allows us to disentangle the problems you describe. American society defines some people as "white" and others as "non-white." American society further systemically favors whites over non-whites. That is racism. People can either comply with this normative structure or develop their own opinions about people. If they are prejudiced against non-whites as the racism of their society dictates, they are responsible for that. We can correctly say that they are responsible for their personal bigotry and we can say that society is racist. Making that separation between the personal and the macrosocial allows us to acknowledge that even if all of society is racist, a person can believe otherwise. Too much of current discussion about racism does not acknowledge that.

I also insist that it is crucial to include power dynamics in our thinking. I don't know who you believe is absolving Black people of misconduct, but the conceptualization of personal bigotry and societal racism in no way does that.