Statistics are just as fraught as anecdotes, and are even a kind of prejudicial exercise in this case. Systemic racism affects everyone negatively, not just the socially constructed "race" that's being oppressed in any given conversation. It's a blight on our societies, with a deep-rooted history, and it transcends any anecdotal experience even if it is reflected in them. The question is not whether we can come up with fancy pseudoscientific arguments that debate the existence of racism, but rather, a question as to what kind of a society we want to live in, and what we can do to create it.
It only stands to reason that when one person calmly states "everything is fine" and another screams in a panic that "everything is fucked", that the disconnect should be bridged such that both parties get closer to feeling like everything is fine. No?
Gaslighting people with statistical gibberish or patronizing them as hysterical to invalidate their arguments is, logically, totally unproductive in that goal.
You're going to be disappointed if, in order to meaningfully engage in a discussion, you need a hard definition for race. Race is socially constructed, as I mentioned above. That means it exists in context, not in a vacuum. Every context is different, it shifts and changes over time, and it comes into effect in myriad ways. Each manifestation is unique, but again as I said above, it reflects the systemic conditions from which it springs. The fact that it is relative does not mean it doesn't exist at all. For instance, the Indian side of my family was white when they lived in Africa, and they became brown when they moved to the UK. That is how it works, and in no way does it invalidate the fact that race is real even if it is variable. It doesn't discretely exist as a biological condition, like skin color, or as any kind of directly quantifiable state outside of time. It might manifest in measurable ways, but that is a different thing entirely.
Racism exists. To challenge this is certainly anyone's prerogative, but it is unproductive and quite foolish to do so. Systemic racism also exists, in the sense that it is not something that can be contained only to discrete interpersonal experiences. The way we operate in the world is systemic, and when we start to investigate those systems, we gain a deeper understanding of not only society as a whole, but our own choices as well. Race exists, but not in the way you demand. It exists because social constructions are real and have material impacts on peoples' lives.
