Why there's no such thing as "Reverse Racism"

[Matt1970]

Anyone who thinks someone can't be racist because they are a minority has their head up their ass.

 

[glenn1]

So basically OP is saying that blacks are so much less capable than whites, that they aren't even qualified to be fully qualified racists.

 

[corwin]

So basically OP is saying that blacks are so much less capable than whites, that they aren't even qualified to be fully qualified racists.

Damn...LMAO

 

[rudder]

There is no system of oppression in America that actively works to oppress and subjugate white people.. period.

This I believe. I for one, have never seen an uneducated, dirt poor white person. Never.

Not there this is a system in place that is oppressing and subjugating black people... other than the liberals war on poverty and creating of the great society.

 

[nehalem256]

Exhibit A: South Africa.

Exhibit B: Zimbabwe

Exhibit C: 1804 Haitian Ethnic Cleansing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_Massacre

 

[Darwin333]

Of course there's reverse racism. Quanell X is proof of such.

re·verse

/riˈvərs/
Verb
Move backward.

Adjective
Going in or turned toward the direction opposite to that previously stated.

Noun
A complete change of direction or action.



rac·ism

/ˈrāˌsizəm/
Noun

• The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as...
• Prejudice or discrimination directed against someone of a different race based on such a belief.

The entire phrase "reverse racism" is retarded and makes absolutely no sense. If you want to say black folk are or can be racists, fine I actually know some myself, but to call it "reverse racism" is worse than using "irregardless" in my opinion.

 

[Fern]

I read the article, painful as it was.

It boils down to "there is no such thing as "reverse racism" because I say so".

It was terribly unpersuasive and unimpressive.

Fern

 

[Fern]

-snip-
The entire phrase "reverse racism" is retarded and makes absolutely no sense. If you want to say black folk are or can be racists, fine I actually know some myself, but to call it "reverse racism" is worse than using "irregardless" in my opinion.

Perhaps so. But the author is just arguing minorities (AA) can't be racists.

Ferrn

 

[Double Trouble]

First, there is no such thing as "reverse racism", as plenty of others have pointed out. Racism is racism. Second, the article and other mentally challenged morons like him try their best to come up with some reasoning to justify racism on the part of anyone non white. It's plain stupid. Give it up. Racism is wrong, regardless of who is perpetrating it and why.

 

[BoberFett]

This I believe. I for one, have never seen an uneducated, dirt poor white person. Never.

I'm not even going to waste the few moments it takes to search this forum to go back and find previous posts by the Oldgamer, the ignorant buffoon.

But I'm willing to bet he's pretty negative about WalMart. If there's any system designed to keep white people down, that'd be one of them.

But pieces of shit like Oldgamer have to keep the narrative under control: "Whitey bad, minority good, guilty white man even better." Because you know, you don't want black thinking TOO highly of themselves. Gotta keep them down just a little bit, to make sure guilty-whitey stays on top.

 

[Paratus]

The reason we have equal opportunity in this country is the previous bouts of institutional discriminatory policies against minorities that was practiced at the local, state and federal level as well as by many industries and businesses.

Simply ending the practices did not fix the damage done. Red-lining of real-estate, mortgages and neighborhood busting all contributed.

So if you don't like equal opportunity blame the government for past poor behavior. Most of you shouldn't have a problem blaming government.

And if you don't think the damage still lingers today well take a look at this:

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Wow, and some of you wanted me to read your shit online, yet you didn't bother to read this article.. figures.

There is no system of oppression in America that actively works to oppress and subjugate white people.. period.

If you experience discrimination, prejudice, or bigotry, it’s valid to be upset about it and want to talk about it. It is not valid to claim that it is reverse racism, and certainly not valid to claim that it is racism on par with anything like the institutionalized racism.

Yeah because when someone is murdered because they are white it's racism.

 

[monovillage]

The reason we have equal opportunity in this country is the previous bouts of institutional discriminatory policies against minorities that was practiced at the local, state and federal level as well as by many industries and businesses.

Simply ending the practices did not fix the damage done. Red-lining of real-estate, mortgages and neighborhood busting all contributed.

So if you don't like equal opportunity blame the government for past poor behavior. Most of you shouldn't have a problem blaming government.

And if you don't think the damage still lingers today well take a look at this:

http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/

So what you are saying is that institutional/governmental racism is OK as long as it harms one race and benefits the right race?

 

[buckshot24]

OP, instead of posting gibberish BS you should teach your daughter about honesty.

 

[Triumph]

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racism:
-
1: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2: racial prejudice or discrimination
-

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/american-english/racism?q=racism
-
the belief that some races are better than others, or the unfair treatment of someone because of his or her race
-

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/racism?showCookiePolicy=true
-
1. the belief that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others

2. abusive or aggressive behaviour towards members of another race on the basis of such a belief
-

I'm not saying that there isn't institutional racism. There is. However, the author's redefinition of 'racism' to what is essentially institutional racism so as to render it impossible for a racial minority to be racist against a racial majority suggests to me that he has an agenda.

I came in here to pretty much post this. I went to Websters to actually look up the definition of racism, it didn't really seem to have the same definition as the author of this blurb, curiously. So yeah, it's pretty easy to say there's no such thing as reverse racism, or black-on-white racism, or whatever, if you arbitrarily decide to redefine it according to your own specific criteria. The author decided that the term racism can only apply to a society or institution of some (again, arbitrary) description. If I disagree with that point (as does Webster, apparently), then I have no reason to agree with the remainder of the article.

 

[Paratus]

So what you are saying is that institutional/governmental racism is OK as long as it harms one race and benefits the right race?

No the government shouldn't play favorites.

The problem is, it already did. So what do you do to fix it? Sorry we fucked your parents and grandparents but we're done with that now. So work yourself out of the hole we put you in.


The government(s) and people chose civil rights, anti-discrimination laws, voting laws and EO to address the previous inequity.

 

[cubby1223]

Why there's no such thing as "Reverse Racism"

Reminds me of the wisdom of another forum user who posted these words:

I think I have more respect for those who openly admit their racism than for those who pretend they aren't but clearly are.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Even if non-whites can't be considered racist - a dubious argument at best that strains definitions and makes a very poorly crafted attempt to exempt anyone who isn't white - they can still be bigots. Bigotry knows no racial boundaries.

btw, according to the OP's own claim, Zimmerman couldn't possibly be racist because he isn't white. I wonder if the OP or the author of the article he linked understand that their own argument makes that case?

 

[cubby1223]

No the government shouldn't play favorites.

The problem is, it already did. So what do you do to fix it?

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I know this! Because the government played favorites in the past, the solution obviously is to play favorites in the future!

Or not?

Sorry we fucked your parents and grandparents but we're done with that now. So work yourself out of the hole we put you in.

What's the alternative? Look to the Indian Reservations to see what the awesome power of government handouts and reparations achieve for equality and prosperity.

What's your solution? I hope it's not to have a death threat war to show each other our willingness to accept one another for who they are.

Whether you want to believe it or not, you have a whole helluva lot of "whiteys" who want African-Americans to feel like they are American. But even then that's racist because to want someone else to succeed is saying you are more successful to begin with, the bottom line is there is a set of rules somewhere but nobody knows what they are. Helping is racist. Not helping is racist. Saying anything is racist. Saying nothing is racist. Seeing color is racist. Not seeing color is racist.

 

[Paratus]

Ooh, ooh, ooh, I know this! Because the government played favorites in the past, the solution obviously is to play favorites in the future!

Or not?



What's the alternative? Look to the Indian Reservations to see what the awesome power of government handouts and reparations achieve for equality and prosperity.

What's your solution? I hope it's not to have a death threat war to show each other our willingness to accept one another for who they are.

Whether you want to believe it or not, you have a whole helluva lot of "whiteys" who want African-Americans to feel like they are American. But even then that's racist because to want someone else to succeed is saying you are more successful to begin with, the bottom line is there is a set of rules somewhere but nobody knows what they are. Helping is racist. Not helping is racist. Saying anything is racist. Saying nothing is racist. Seeing color is racist. Not seeing color is racist.

I see a lot of whining in your post but not much of a solution. What happened in the past happened. Actions were taken to correct some of it.

Is it better? Sure, somewhat. Ideally anyone effected would be able to work themselves out of it. Looking at where poverty resides today I don't think it's been fixed yet, do you?

 

[StrangerGuy]

DailyKOS = Progressive Stormfront.

Man, that site is full of lunatics believing there is no such thing as self responsibility and whatever shit that happens to them must always be the fault of others. Certainly qualifies for a diagnosis of a mental illness.

 

[monovillage]

No the government shouldn't play favorites.

The problem is, it already did. So what do you do to fix it?

You support the government and institutions practicing racism to somehow correct the government and institutions committing racism?

Sorry we fucked your parents and grandparents but we're done with that now. So work yourself out of the hole we put you in.
The government(s) and people chose civil rights, anti-discrimination laws, voting laws and EO to address the previous inequity.

So as long as we can get people to support racism it's OK now? Well, OK as long as it has the proper target and if it's for the right reasons.

 

[justoh]

Another stupid thread and article referenced by this OP. Sheesh. inasmuch as it can make any sense at all, it's not impossible. And if the author is going to claim that it's impossible then they should be arguing why it's impossible and not why it's not present. Also, repeating paragraphs.

 

[cubby1223]

Bottom line to this entire thread is, there comes a point in every person's life when one must stop listening to the voices one wants to hear, and begin listening to the voices one needs to hear.

 

[Angry Irishman]

I cut and pasted a very good article that demonstrates some powerful points on the nonsensical claim of reverse racism.

------------------------------

Tim Wise just wrote a great diary on right wing racism. As usual, though, in the comments some folks started claiming that white folks could be the victims of "racism" too. Even though I thought, from Tim's article, that the impossibility of that was clear, it's a point that's very hard to get across.

Coincidentally, an ex-student of mine wrote to me last night and asked me to remind her of my explanation of the impossibility of "Reverse Racism" -- she's in an M.A. program and found herself in a heated argument with some of her peers. So I wrote it down for her and sent it off. I thought, though, that it might be a useful document to post on DailyKos, so here it is...

Tim Wise just wrote a great diary on right wing racism. As usual, though, in the comments some folks started claiming that white folks could be the victims of "racism" too. Even though I thought, from Tim's article, that the impossibility of that was clear, it's a point that's very hard to get across.

Coincidentally, an ex-student of mine wrote to me last night and asked me to remind her of my explanation of the impossibility of "Reverse Racism" -- she's in an M.A. program and found herself in a heated argument with some of her peers. So I wrote it down for her and sent it off. I thought, though, that it might be a useful document to post on DailyKos, so here it is...

In any discussion of racism and it's alleged "Reverse," it's crucial to start with the definitions of prejudice and discrimination, to lay the foundation for understanding racism in context. There's a reason these three terms exist, and a very good reason not to conflate them, as I'll demonstrate below.

Prejudice is an irrational feeling of dislike for a person or group of persons, usually based on stereotype. Virtually everyone feels some sort of prejudice, whether it's for an ethnic group, or for a religious group, or for a type of person like blondes or fat people or tall people. The important thing is they just don't like them -- in short, prejudice is a feeling, a belief. You can be prejudiced, but still be a fair person if you're careful not to act on your irrational dislike.

Discrimination takes place the moment a person acts on prejudice. This describes those moments when one individual decides not to give another individual a job because of, say, their race or their religious orientation. Or even because of their looks (there's a lot of hiring discrimination against "unattractive" women, for example). You can discriminate, individually, against any person or group, if you're in a position of power over the person you want to discriminate against. White people can discriminate against black people, and black people can discriminate against white people if, for example, one is the interviewer and the other is the person being interviewed.

Racism, however, describes patterns of discrimination that are institutionalized as "normal" throughout an entire culture. It's based on an ideological belief that one "race" is somehow better than another "race". It's not one person discriminating at this point, but a whole population operating in a social structure that actually makes it difficult for a person not to discriminate.

A clear cut example is a slave-holding culture: people are born into a society where one sort of person is "naturally" a master, and another sort of person is "naturally" a slave (and sometimes not considered a person at all, but a beast of burden). In a culture like that, discrimination is built into the social, economic and political fabric, and individuals -- even "free" individuals -- don't really have a choice about whether they discriminate or not because even if they don't believe in slavery, they interact every day with slaves and the laws and rules that keep slaves bound.

In a racist society, it takes a special act of courage and willingness to subject oneself to scandal or danger to step outside that system and become an abolitionist. It's not the "fault" of every member of the master class that slavery exists, and some might wish it was gone. But the fact is that every single member of the master class benefits from the unpaid labor of slaves at every level of society because they simply can't avoid consuming the products that slavery produces, or benefiting from the exploitation of slave labor. So unless members of the master class rise up and oppose the system and try to overthrow it (abolitionists, for example), they're going to be complicit in the slave system: even abolitionists will profit -- against their will -- in the slave system because they still have to wear clothes or use other things the system produced.

The above is an extreme, clear example, which I use to make it easier to see the fuzzier, more complex situations in which we operate today. Despite the fact that slaves were freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and that the 14th Amendment gave African Americans voting rights, the institutional structures of racism were not overturned. Even after the 14th was passed, white people still had the power to prevent black people from voting by instituting the poll tax, the grandfather clause, and the "understanding" clause which required blacks to recite any segment of the Constitution the registrar wanted them to recite. In the Sixties, the Civil Rights Voting Acts were passed, which knocked down those obstacles to voting. But black Americans still do not have political power in proportion to their presence in the population (even though there's a black President).

If you look at important voting bodies like the Federal and the State senates and congresses, or at the Federal and State supreme courts, or at the CEO list of major corporations, or at any other body that wields substantial power in the U.S., you will count only a few black faces (and in some cases, none). Out of the number of black faces you count, most of them will not be representing the views of the majority of black people in this country, but the views of the white majority. On the other hand, if you count the number of black people in poverty, and in prisons, or the number of people who are unemployed or lack health care, there are far more black people in these categories than is proportionate to their numbers in the larger society.

Unless you are going to argue that blacks are "naturally" inferior to whites (which is an outright racist position), you have to admit that there is some mechanism that is limiting black opportunity. That's the mechanism we call "racism" -- the interacting social, political, and economic rule systems that all discriminate, either overtly (racial profiling, for example) or covertly (i.e., white majority governments redrawing district voting lines so that black majority areas are politically split up and don't have the electoral power to vote in black candidates; or, white-run banks using zip codes as a criteria for excluding people who apply for loans, and just "happening" to exclude all the majority black neighborhoods in a city, a practice called "red-lining"). One could go on for hours about these various mechanisms, and I'm sure you can think of plenty on your own which discriminate against blacks, Hispanics, "Arab-looking" people, Native Americans, & so on.

Now to "Reverse Racism." It's crucial to maintain the distinction between the above three terms, because otherwise white people tend to redefine "Discrimination" as "Racism". Their main argument is that because both blacks and white can discriminate against each other, that "Reverse Racism" is possible. But the truth of the matter is that black people: 1) have far less opportunity to discriminate against whites than whites have to discriminate against blacks, overall; and 2) black people lack a system of institutionalized support that protect them when they discriminate against whites.

It took black and white people working together for one hundred years to get programs like Affirmative Action installed in the U.S., but it took one white man (Alan Bakke) only a single Supreme Court case to get those programs dismantled because he felt he didn't gain entry into medical school based on his white race.

"Reverse Racism" would only describe a society in which all the rules and roles were turned upside down. That has not happened in the U.S., however much white right wing ideologues want to complain that they're being victimized by the few points of equality that minorities and women have managed to claim. White people who complain about "Reverse Racism" are actually complaining about being denied their privileges, rather than being denied their rights. They feel entitled to be hired and not to be discriminated against, even though the norm is white people discriminating against blacks. If, in a rare instance, a black employer discriminates against a white job applicant, that's not "reverse" anything -- it's simple discrimination. It's to be condemned on principle, but it's not evidence of some systematic program by which whites are being deprived of their rights.

The right wing popularized the term "Reverse Racism" because they were really angry at having their white privileges challenged. Anyone who uses that phrase, whether they are right wing or not, furthers the right wing's cause. This is what I tell Democrats and progressives who I hear using the term -- not only are they being inaccurate, but they're helping out their opponents.

The above arguments can be applied to any institutionalized structure of oppression, affecting any race, ethnic or religious group, and can be used to to oppose claims of "Reverse Sexism" too.

I hope that clarifies things a bit.

Author: Hepshida
Feb 26th 2013

Based on your response to me in the Amen, Brother! thread I'd have to respectfully disagree.