[SpicyLemonZest]

"Anti-racism is bad" is meant to be negated. It would be totally reasonable for someone to respond by saying "well, I actually think anti-racism is good, and here's why".

There's a risk of labels getting in the way, no doubt. But there's a lot of things that seem straightforwardly impossible to reason about without labels. How could we discuss what the abstract principles of race relations in the US should be without identifying and naming the major strains of thought on that topic?

[throwaway15908]

Black people were discriminated in the US from the beginning. This discrimination continued long after civil rights reforms in public and private institutions.

Even if you could magically eliminate racism in every human brain on earth with a snap of your fingers, the socio-econimic factors, inherited from the beginning would continue to be disadvantageous for blacks. So the racism back then, even when not present in minds today, would persist. This is called systemic racism, because we discriminate indirectly, not by skin color but by education, vocabulary, human capital in general. And on top, racism will of course prevail in minds.

From that, you can easily advocate for some sort of compensation, some kind of counter discrimination, anti-racism.

I find that term troublesome too, because you actually asking for support for all poor people, not just blacks, but i would never call it a ideological label and bad, because i can see the reason behind it. Using it as a label and associating it with (group) identity is unfortunate but not my mistake.