Reverse Racism: Anything to Really Debate?

Society and the media has long conditioned us to believe that racism is something of and administered by white people. People often think I’m being funny when I bring up instances where I have been around blacks who were racist against whites. The fact is that blacks can be just as racist and even more than whites. Racism is not something that is derived from one’s skin but the “content of their character” rather.

One of the high schools I attended was filled with black-on-white racism and I eventually transferred away from that school because of it. The school was majority black but still had a good number of whites due to the make up of the region. I witnessed whites harassed for “dressing like blacks” and for just having white skin. I was even a target because I happened to mention that I didn’t watch BET, at which I was told that I was against black people.

Now, I really didn’t think it necessary to rant on and on about how ignorant racism is in all it’s forms and I wanted to find viewpoints that were not commonly heard. So, below, are two excerpts from two different authors, with somewhat similar approaches to reverse racism. Take a look. . .

These excerpts are from Matt Moore’s “American Racism Manifesto”.

“. . . race is a social construct that was established to objectify non-white civilizations and inflate the egos of white European settlers. Race is socio-biological and not bio-sociological.”

“White people can’t experience acts of racism because they are members of the dominant culture. They are held within the majority and thusly reap the benefits of such: they have more privilege and access, based singularly on their whiteness. It’s as if you were on a winning team and you claimed to be losing; the fact that your team was winning would really surpass whether you thought you were losing or winning. Actually, what you thought would really not be relevant in the context of the game at all.”

“If a person of color were to hold a gun to a white person with the intention of shooting that person based on their race,that would be not an act of racism but rather on of racial prejudice. If we consider the power dynamics of this situation, the individual holding the gun would have the individual power, but there would be no institutional power that they could be acting on . . . if a white person held that gun to that person of color and the white person were acting on a racial prejudice then it would be an act of racism. The white person would not only hold the individual power with the gun, he or she also always holds a larger power established by the institution in which they live, and therein lies the racism.”

“There is no reverse racism. For a white person to claim victimization of race in a white dominated society is completely invalid; such an occurrence is impossible and non-existent.

This excerpt, which serves to justify "reverse racism", is from Stanley Fish's "Reverse Racism, or How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black".

“. . .in this country whites once set themselves apart from blacks and claimed privileges for themselves while denying them to others. Now, on the basis of race, blacks are claiming special status and reserving for themselves privileges they deny to others. Isn't one as bad as the other? The answer is no. One can see why by imagining that it is not 1993 but 1955, and that we are in a town in the South with two more or less distinct communities, one white and one black. No doubt each community would have a ready store of dismissive epithets, ridiculing stories, self serving folk myths, and expressions of plain hatred, all directed at the other community, and all based in racial hostility Yet to regard their respective racisms-if that is the word-as equivalent would be bizarre, for the hostility of one group stems not from any wrong done to it but from its wish to protect its ability to deprive citizens of their voting rights, to limit access to educational institutions, to prevent entry into the economy except at the lowest and most meanest levels, and to force members of the stigmatized group to ride in the back of the bus. The hostility of the other group is the result of these actions, and whereas hostility and racial anger are unhappy facts wherever they are found, a distinction must surely be made between the ideological hostility of the oppressors and the experience-based hostility of those who have been oppressed.”

Though formerly opposed to several of the above claims, I have given it some thought, and the segment from Moore that "white people can’t experience acts of racism because they are members of the dominant culture" actually seems plausible to me now.

Links
Moore's Essay - http://www.artdepository.com/manifesto/manifesto.html
Fish's - http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3812/is_200001/ai_n8881180


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