I'm definitely not an expert in this, but I'm speaking from reading books on sociology and dominant group psychology. It would take more time for me to look up the original sources, but Wikipedia does agree with me (and they also agree that the definition varies!).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Definitions
"David Wellman has defined racism as “culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities”."
"Sociologists Noël A. Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “...a highly organized system of 'race'-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/'race' supremacy."
Both of these definitions involve power as the main mechanism for preserving prejudice, do they not?
I don't know what scholarly sources you've seen that use that definition, but most scholarly sources I've seen define don't factor power into the definition of racism, but do certainly acknowledge that power dynamics have a pretty big impact on the effects of racism.
OTOH, the "only people in positions of power can be racists" thing is something I've seen pretty much exclusively in non-scholarly sources.