The Anti-Defamation League last week reversed course on its beliefs about what constitutes “racism.” Previously defining the word as “the belief that a particular race is superior or inferior to another,” the ADL now considers racism “the marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people.”

The ADL’s reductive conception of hate no longer includes various forms of racism at play around the world. When I interned with the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (currently the Human Rights and Special Prosecution Section), my colleagues examined genocides in Rwanda, the Balkans, Guatemala, and other countries. Not caused by hierarchies that privilege white people, these genocides resulted from long-standing prejudices against ethnic and religious minorities. Similarly, in today’s Afghanistan, Uzbek, Tajik, Panjshiri, and Hazara Afghans are fearful of the Pashtun Taliban not because they wield “white privilege,” but because the Taliban act on their intolerance of ethnic minorities.