The definition needs to be broadly agreed upon amongst the majority of the people who are victimized by Racism. The law defines sexual harassment as what would be seen as harassment by “a reasonable woman“. not a reasonable person, but a reasonable woman, which recognizes that knowing what it’s like to be a woman is an essential part of being able to make such judgments. There are plenty of Tylers in the world, who see racism everywhere. There are also white people who come up with abstract ideas about racism that have nothing to do with anything that has ever caused pain to a black person. Both of those factors have to be discounted, because the primary purpose of rules of courtesy is to establish some kind of consensus that takes the majority into consideration.

That’s true of all our other rules of courtesy as well. In some Australian aboriginal cultures, men greet each other by shaking each other’s penises. There’s no rational reason that there’s anything wrong with that. We don’t do it because the majority of men in our society would be disgusted and freaked out by that at a gut level. there are similar emotional reactions to certain words and behaviors that are experienced by reasonable Black people. Their feelings have not been taken into consideration so far, because of their lack of power and privilege. we are in the process of rectifying that problem now.