Usually when I hear liberals talk about racism it’s in terms of institutions and communities. American “institutions” are structured with a racist bias, the white “community” is prejudiced against the black “community” — sweeping statements like that. Like most conservatives, I’m skeptical of that model. I’ve never seen evidence that any American institution has an inherently pro-white bias, nor that whites in America have a unified negative opinion of minorities.

Rather, whenever I see a list of complaints about white privilege, about the prejudices minorities face and whites don’t, the convincing examples focus on individual encounters. A particular hotel clerk who made a disparaging remark, a particular cop who pulled you over for no reason. Those examples don’t prove that all hotel clerks and cops are part of an anti-black or anti-Latino complex; they aren’t struggles against a nameless, faceless “institution.” They’re encounters with specific people who hold racist attitudes. So sure, racism exists in America. It just seems to be on an individual level.