Being racist isn’t the same as being evil. Just about everyone, to some extent, is racist. I don’t see how that’s an extreme claim. Humans are a social species. We have in-groups and out-groups. Often times the most salient marker for whether someone is in your group is whether they share certain phenotypes or language. There’s nothing weird about that. It’s expected. It’s our default setting. But it does lead to treating some people differently than others. That’s racism.

In racism training, you simply acknowledge that by being human, you are racist. You can’t cure it anymore than you can cure alcoholism. It’s always with you and if you care to not be racist, you have to be aware of that.

Why is that claim uncomfortable?

The claim is uncomfortable because the word "racism" has a connotation in some circles of basically being a klansman (or at the least of actively hating people based on nothing except for their race).

Admitting said claim for those people does not feel like acknowledging the system we live in against their will or that they have unconscious biases. It feels like acknowledging a serious character defect, worthy of ostracism, being fired, and possibly having a mob show up at your house.

Now, I'm not a prescriptivist. I acknowledge that language evolves, but it does not evolve the same way in every place at the same time. It tends to evolve in a particular place and spread out from there. The particular definition you're using has not spread to the entirety of society yet. Your pitch could really benefit from some localization to the various sub-dialects of the english language if you'd like less push back in the future.

This is a cult like approach. The main proposition "Everyone is a racist, whether you know it or not", is an overstatement. There is no way you can tell "everyone" is a "racist", is just an aphorism with multiple interpretations. This has become the tool of identity politics and group thinking, throw and aphorism and let people fight over it. Unfortunate.

Hm. Humans are built to identify with a group, absorb culture, and be uncertain and uneasy when not in their group or their culture. That can easily lead to treating different people differently, and to the conclusion.

It's not completely true though. We usually reserve the term for active, conscious acts. Not just unconscious bias. So maybe we need a new word for that?

We may tend to prefer in-groups as humans, but there's no reason why one's "in-group" should be defined by race. Indeed the whole notion of 'race' itself is largely artificial, historically- and locally-contingent, and thus so is racism. If the claim was that as humans, we're all naturally driven to be more broadly biased and perhaps intolerant towards some others, that would be far more defensible.

> We may tend to prefer in-groups as humans, but there's no reason why one's "in-group" should be defined by race.

I agree! There’s no reason in-groups should be defined by race...but, at least in the United States, it was quite literally legislated in law for centuries and formed the basis of a slave state and then segregation. So it seems like race has historically been one way we define in-groups and out-groups. Based on current events, I’d argue race is still pretty important to a lot of people. Otherwise our politics wouldn’t be...whatever you want to call them.

> Indeed the whole notion of 'race' itself is largely artificial, historically- and locally-contingent, and thus so is racism.

Race is socially constructed but it’s definitely real. Racism is also real.