I agree with a great deal of what you wrote--especially the what are you willing to do challenge--and will get to responding to the rest later if I think it warrants comment at all as opposed to just the bunch of claps I've already given.

But the claim quoted above is short and sweet and somewhere between highly misleading and badly wrong.

Sorry for the length of the reply, but I think it deserves about this much to do the topic justice.

What's wrong with the quote?

If by "actions" you include "statements of your intentions", then I am forced to agree: for now, at least, we do not routinely possess the capacity to look into each others' hearts and change our actions accordingly. If someone privately thinks all people are equal but in public says their sympathies lie with bona fide White Supremacists (but they don't actually do anything beyond state intentions), then it doesn't matter that they're a bastion of equality and justice in their hearts: the action of stating their intent to support is actually making racism worse. The problem with your statement, in this case, is that it's highly misleading. Normally we don't consider speech as action and divorced from intent; if anything, we tend to consider speech and intent as closely related while the connection to action is more tenuous ("actions speak louder than words").

If by "actions" you only mean "actions", then the claim is badly wrong. The reason is that we use our intent--or at least statements thereof--to direct and plan our actions, and we react emotionally and with our own plans to the (stated) intent of others. For instance, if we do not live in Canada and we all pick someone and tell them every day, "Only Canadians are nice enough to be able to stand a garbage person like you," even if we give that person a job, pay them normally, police them normally, and so on, they are likely to be miserable, and probably have a much better than average chance of ending up in Canada.

But if you really, really believe that intent doesn't matter, I have a challenge for you.

Don't ever call structural racism "racism" again. Racism is an intent-loaded word, even if it doesn't absolutely require intent. Talk about fairness. Talk about giving everyone the same chance to succeed, regardless of race. But just never call it racism. You'll stop triggering a bunch of right-wing folks, and a bunch of fragile white folks by impugning their intent, and you get to make every point you ever could have wanted to make about actions. So by abandoning intent-rich language you'll gain leverage over action (but lose it over intent...except...intent doesn't matter! So no biggie, right?).

Seems kind of...wrong, doesn't it? A lot of the structural problems now are the direct result of historical malice. But if intent really honestly doesn't matter, why would it be wrong to use language that no longer references that malice?

If you want instead to say that the only intent that matters is intent that is communicated and which ultimately leads to a change in actions (and likewise for past intent that has led to past actions), I'm totally on board with that. But this leaves intent still mattering a lot.

I have a similar criticism of the link contents: if intent doesn't matter, why use a term that has strong implications of intent? Suppose they said: "Maintenance of racial inequality is not about intent, it is about the result of behavior that maintains inequality regardless of intent." Well heck--who could argue with that? And now you're miles away from implying intent. Why use the word "racism"?

I think it's fine to criticize intent. Intent matters because we communicate it and use it to drive our actions (which themselves matter).

I think it's fine to criticize subconscious intent, detected through revealed preference. If someone claims one thing but their actions suggest otherwise, it's fine to call them on it so everyone at least gets a chance to see if they can put their money where their mouth is.

And of course I think it's fine to criticize actions regardless of intent.

But I don't think it's fine to say that you care about actions while using language that (somewhat deniably!) implies that anyone who disagrees with the actions have ugly, despicable intent. That's dishonest, divisive, and if the culture war so far is anything to go by, a strategy that is liable through engendering honor-driven reactions to the language to be actively and drastically counterproductive to the stated aims.

Now, this is a good way to build a tribe: switch up your lingo so the in-crowd's all, yeah, yeah, we get it; and the others are all what even is this rubbish, no way! It's a high-fidelity marker for who the good guys are, and you get to feel superior to the bad guys because you can pretend that they reject the noble meaning rather than that you're just communicating badly. (Indeed, in In Gods We Trust, Scott Atran argues that the more perplexing and apparently counterfactual to outsiders a claim seems, the better it is at bringing insiders together--he argues for this this in a religious context, but the insight is broadly applicable.)

But it's a bad way to get the right actions out of everyone across tribal affiliations. And even though I don't agree that actions are all that matters, they matter for a lot. So it's bad strategy overall.

When you talk actions-not-intentions, use the language that is maximally clear at reinforcing the point; if you think it's always actions-not-intentions, always use the language.

So you've not convinced me on this yet. When I see structural racism, I intend to call it such, but I am going to do so fully owning my claim that I believe ill intent led to the current problem even if the intent has since changed; and that the intent matters, because society as a whole has an extra obligation to fix harms it has intentionally inflicted: its purpose is for mutual benefit not for harm, and if you don't assign it considerable responsibility to fix intentional harms (and a decent responsibility to fix inadvertent ones) there is little to prevent it from inflicting more and more harm.