Racism

Function: noun

Date: 1933 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

from The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

During the mid-1990s, President Bill Clinton came up with a catchy slogan for his position on affirmative action: “Mend it, don’t end it.” Clinton was responding to the rising tide of seething anger over the perceived injustices of affirmative action. Affirmative action is, of course, the catch-all name given to policies — in hiring workers or in admitting students to universities — that give some level of priority to certain people because of their race, ethnicity, or sex as a way to recompense members of those groups for discrimination other members faced in the past. Broadly speaking, affirmative action tends to give preference to racial and ethnic minorities and to women.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, frustration over the consequences of affirmative action began to boil over among whites, especially white males, leading to phenomena like Jesse Helms’s infamous “Hands” campaign ad. The popular way to express the frustration expressed by the “Hands” ad was that the man pictured in the ad was a victim of “reverse racism”. Instead of a white male getting a job in part because of his race (which would be racism), he was denied a job in part because of his race (which was “reverse” racism).

The problem, however, is the association of “racism” with white people.  “Reverse” racism can’t be regular racism, after all; otherwise it would just be called “racism”.  The designation of  actions or attitudes considered racist when committed by whites as anything other than “racism” when committed by non-whites directly implies that regular “racism” is somehow unique to the white race.

But such a notion is clearly absurd.  People always prefer members of their own groups over those of other groups.  This is unquestionably the rule in the primate species from which humans evolved, as well as in every human civilization in history.  (And it clearly remains the rule today, to the chagrin of many who see diversity as an end in itself.) In light of these facts, there is no possible way that racism only emerged with the white race, since no member of genus Homo evolved white skin until humans migrated to Europe, more than 100,000 years after they first appeared in Africa. Yet the denial of this inescapable conclusion is at the heart of terms like “reverse racism”. Indeed, the term “reverse racism” makes no sense unless one assumes that racism just is what whites do, and that non-whites can only ever practice a “reverse” racism that is somehow different from the original kind, practiced only by whites.

This topic may seem overblown to some readers, who don’t think that they think this way (even if they still talk about reverse racism), and don’t know anyone who does.  As I’ve stressed before, however, words mean things, and their meanings reflect the assumptions of the speaker. Those assumptions can be voiced or unvoiced, conscious or unconscious, but they all mold their speakers’ thoughts.  We must be clear: there is no such things as “reverse” racism.  There is only racism.  As long as we use terms like “reverse” racism to describe actions committed against whites, we perpetuate the pervasive, but often unstated, myth that racism is an inherently white action, and that whites are somehow more racist than people of other races.

This is a disgusting and obvious lie, but it pervades the subconsciouses — and, in the cases of people like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright, the consciouses — of many advocates and media commentators. (How else to explain their complicity in sordid affairs like the Tawana Brawley accusations or the Duke Lacrosse false rape allegations?) It is high time, however, that this lie was called out for what it is and stopped. And one way for right-thinking people to begin to stop it is to admit that “reverse” racism is a myth and stop talking about it.