What is a racist incident?

Now, obviously, definitions of anti-Semitism have been much discussed of late. I'm afraid I have not followed that debate terribly closely.

And this is not an area I know anything about, but today I caught sight of a document which seemed to say that the organisation will adopt as its definition of a racist incident the Macpherson report definition of a racist incident as "any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person".

I think it lacked a footnote. 

Now, this may or may not be a useful working hypothesis. It might have value as a simple and clear way of collecting police statistics, for example. But we have to be clear here that what we are saying is that we are going to call anything someone thinks is racist, racist for certain purposes. 

Clearly it would be absurd to say that all perceptions are reasonable, well-founded, sustainable or true. 

If we adopt this definition, then racism will (for these purposes) be in the eye of the beholder. We will then need another category of intentionally racist incidents or probably racist incidents or something, won't we?

Or am I missing something?