racially challenged

adjective

Not white, and thus facing challenges (or perceived as deficient) due to racism.

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Meanings

adjectiveracially challenged (not comparable)
  1. USeuphemisticnot comparableNot white, and thus facing challenges (or perceived as deficient) due to racism.

    Derricotte explains that being racially challenged moves one “outside of love, community” and places “that territory in another person's head that made her the thing hated".

    2013, Sika Dagbovie-Mullins, Crossing Black: Mixed-Race Identity in Modern American Fiction and Culture
    2 more examples

    He'd assumed that on average Italians were about as dumb, lazy and street-level criminal as a certain racially challenged segment of the U.S. population, only with better cuisine and cuter noses.

    2009, Michael Dibdin, End Games: An Aurelio Zen Mystery, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, →ISBN, page 206

    "You must have quite a powerful mind for one so young and racially challenged." Ted looked up sharply at the dragon's comment. "What do you mean, racially challenged? A black kid can't be a wizard? I guess all wizards have to be white […]"

    2019, Brock E. Deskins, The Portal, Crossroad Press
  2. USeuphemisticnot comparableWhite, and thus facing challenges in appealing to nonwhite voters, or in functioning (due to being racist), etc.

    And he gives an account of the odd coupling of Utopian co-op developer Abraham Kazan and the anti-utopian, racially challenged Robert Moses that is alone worth the price of admission.

    2010, Peter R. Eisenstadt, Rochdale Village: Robert Moses, 6,000 Families, and New York City's Great Experiment in Integrated Housing, Cornell University Press, →ISBN
    2 more examples

    […] almost stateless, of coming to a country which was 'racially challenged', which had a law against Chinese immigration, and which was about to intern its citizens of Japanese origin.

    2000, Refugees, page 20

    It was also implied that the racially challenged Republicans, hobbled by their party's overwhelming whiteness, somehow didn't want nonwhite Americans to share in the coming cornucopia.

    2013, L. Brent Bozell, III; Tim Graham, Collusion: How the Media Stole the 2012 Election---and How to Stop Them from Doing It in 2016, Harper Collins, →ISBN, page 1
  3. not comparableUsed other than figuratively or idiomatically: see racially, challenged.

    […] belonging, accommodation and attachment to a nation, with white Africans or Asian Africans being nationalistically and racially challenged. The case of politically aspiring white Kenyans has become a recent politically heated debate.

    2000, Edmond Maloba Were, Maurice Nyamanga Amutabi, Nationalism and Democracy for People Centred Development in Africa
Cite this entry
APA

racially challenged. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/racially%20challenged

MLA

“racially challenged.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/racially%20challenged. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “racially challenged,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/racially%20challenged.

Source: racially challenged on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.