There's one concept most people (especially those who haven't studied sociology) call "racism". It's a mechanism that used to be very useful for our survival 40k-odd years ago when people who looked different were likely not from our tribe and likely hostile to us or at least had no allegiance to our tribe and could thus not be trusted. They're different, they don't know us, we don't know them, they might hit us over the head with a rock, we should be cautious or even chase them away. In a modern society this instinct is still present but obviously far less helpful and tends to make things difficult for us.
The other concept is also called "racism", although I'd prefer to call it "Racism" (with a capital R). This is what feminists try to talk about when they tell people they're "racists". It's not necessarily about the actions or thoughts of any individual and certainly not about mere acknowledgement of the differences between two cultural or ethnic groups of people. It's about the systemic effect (lowercase r) racism can have in a society, making life hard for people in groups that are already disadvantaged and preventing them from achieving equality.
You could argue that the "technical term" for the former type of racism is actually xenophobia. You could argue that academia gets to define semantics and everybody else please should stop using the terms incorrectly thank you very much. But it's more productive to acknowledge that widely used terms have well-established meanings in colloquial English and communication can ultimately only work if the majority can agree on what they are talking about.
