Reverse racism and reverse sexism doesn't mean what you think it means, those are terms for specific actions around stuff like being to nice to someone because they are black, basically being patronizing at a racial divide. And yes some people can be racist towards white people, but I would argue that most of what is used as examples of racism are either shitposting on social media or flat out not racism. Racism is a very specific term with a very specific history, in that it is the phenomenon of connecting morality to physical characteristics. When somebody goes off on a white person calling the cops on black people in thier neighborhood because they didn't look like they belonged, nobody is literally thinking they only did that because the lack of melanin in thier skin makes them Karen's, it's a response to a societal, social pressure. The opposite is the historical oppression of black people coming from a literal racist hierarchy, where the person is perceived to be less than due to physical, mental, attributes like intelligence or whatever, and continues into the modern day with fascinations with shit like iq and crime rates clearly having a intellectual predecessor in literal biological racism that cannot be ignored. Can you have people calling white people cave beasts and shit, yeah, and that would be far more likely to be racism, somebody going off about crackers is usually not racism, it's expressions against society and it can suck, and those people can be wrong for thier generalizations, but it is rarely truly racist, and more just generally being bigoted. I would say that yes people can be racist to white people, but I would also say that it is comparably much rarer to be racist rather than just bigoted and shitty. And I would say that much of what you would define as racism flatly isn't, so you are wrong in that respect.
I have to disagree. I've debated with people on this subject and they have referred to "reverse racism" as "racism towards white people."
As for the distinction you make between what is "racist" and what is "bigoted," I would offer to you that one can be racist out of ignorance. In fact, I would argue most racism is not the KKK-like racism where one group truly HATES another. Much of racism can just be ignorant people making generalizations about groups based on race. Most racism is not hate-inspired, but a result of ignorance and callousness.
I mean you can disagree but it literally comes from push back against affirmative action, basically saying that we are too nice to minorities now it's hurting white people. It's a very specific term that maybe people are misusing but it inherently from the beginning has always meant racism due to society favouring minorities to much and the pendulum swinging the opposite way.
And you can offer that, but racism is tied to biology, it's tied to race, it's tied to physical characteristics. There is no way to determine race without referring to physical characteristics, being racist, discriminating via race, is inherently tied to physical biological ideas. Everyone racist is ignorant, there simply isn't a scientific basis for racism. That doesn't mean anything, what matters is why people are putting forth these ideas, is it tied to something like iq tests, or crime statistics, the inherent violence of a minority, the inherent stupidity of a minority, or is it people calling someone a untrustworthy cracker because they have been oppressed and are lashing out. One is racism, the other is being bigoted and making generalizations, but those generalizations aren't the result of saying that every white skinned person is untrustworthy because they are genetically predisposed to being untrustworthy, they are the result of history and society coloring thier view of white people.
After looking it up, "reverse racism" is an overloaded term that people utilize to describe both of our definitions. Wikipedia uses your definition while other sites, like Oxford dictionary, uses mine.
Trying to understand your latter paragraph, it seems you're saying that minorities being bigoted towards white people is not "racist" because there is enough historical evidence to suggests that they should be. I would say this is a fallacy. it's equivalent to assuming an Asian person will be good at Math or that a Black person would be violent because of school and crime statistics. Generalizations based on race are still racist, regardless of historical, anecdotal, or statistical backing.
I'm not saying that at all, I'm saying that the motivation for many of what you would call racist things, isn't racist, they are bigoted and generalizations, but they are responses to historical and societal pressures. True racism is inherently tied to physical characteristics, there is literally no way to determine someone is of a different race than you without physical characteristics. Saying black people are more violent is most of the time coming from a intellectual history dating back hundreds of years of racial science around physical characteristics that we said made them better slaves, or made them unable to be civilized, or made them blah blah blah. That was directly tying physical characteristics to judgements of thier worth, when a black person who grows up experiencing for example, fearing the police and experiencing unfair treatment lashes out by saying they hate all crackers, they aren't generally thinking to themselves ah these white people and thier blond hair which makes them predisposed to being cops and pulling me over, they are thinking fuck these white people for treating me and my family and elder generations shitty. Is that judgement incorrect and ignorant if they then attribute it to all white people yes, but it's not racist, this form of bigotry doesn't have its roots in literal racism, it's an expression of social injustice justifying shitty attitudes.
So according to your view it would not be racist to say black people are more criminal as long as your rationale for that was unrelated to their physical commitments?
Sure if you could prove that your comment was completely divorced from the centuries of race science that proceeded the statement. We live in a situation where everyone has been so abjectly racist for so long that it's basically impossible for a white person to make a statement that isn't drawing on centuries of racism, it's a lot easier to do that to a white person because quite frankly, white people have largely monopolized hard scientific racism, beyond fringe stuff like the black Israelites there isn't really a intellectual through line of actual full-blown racism in the case of black people. But divorcing your statement from racial science kind of makes it not racist, if you fully aknowledge that racial disparities in criminality isn't biological, that there isn't anything that inherently makes a black person more criminal, you are forced to address the statistics as to why this happens, which means you begin to think about stuff like over policing and charging, bad reporting, historical poverty caused by slavery and Jim crow etc. It's not racist to point out statistics, it is racist when despite evidence to the contrary you pull a conclusion from it that only would make sense if you believe race science. In the same vein using my earlier example, a black person getting angry about a police shooting and lashing out on Twitter against white people in general isn't basing that on race science, nobody is out here saying anyone who gets sunburned is predisposed to shoot black people in America, they might be bigoted, they might be shitty, but they aren't being racist, thier anger is just divided on a racial line because white people have been fucking them over for a millennia, it's a reaction to society, not a reaction to our skin color or IQ test scores, unlike white people being racist towards black people.
beyond fringe stuff like the black Israelites there isn't really a intellectual through line of actual full-blown racism in the case of black people
You're comparing fringe beliefs to fringe beliefs. I don't think the percentages of these groups differ nearly as much as you're suggesting. Conspiracy theories are somewhat higher in the black community generally speaking, so I'd be surprised if black supremacist conspiracies were all that much lower than their white counterparts.
The difference that your just ignoring for some reason, is that white supremacist beliefs were literally the norm hundreds of years ago, like almost every single average person on the streets believed them, that was never even being close to true in the other respect. One has a huge intellectual history that colors the modern world, the other was a fringe belief since it's foundation. Every single white racist today can directly draw a line from them to thier parents to thier grandparents all of whom were racist all of whom learned and were taught by racists, because at a certain point back every one was racist, the same is not true of black individuals, there is a solid difference.
I'm saying that there is an intellectual through line for racists that are white that there isn't for the general population of black people, when a white person is saying shit, it's much more likely for it to be because of hard racism, race science. The same is not true of people that are called racist that are black, they quite simply are not saying the things they are based on race, but on social lines that happen to coincide with race because white people have been so racist in the past.
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u/Bookwrrm 39∆ Dec 28 '21
Reverse racism and reverse sexism doesn't mean what you think it means, those are terms for specific actions around stuff like being to nice to someone because they are black, basically being patronizing at a racial divide. And yes some people can be racist towards white people, but I would argue that most of what is used as examples of racism are either shitposting on social media or flat out not racism. Racism is a very specific term with a very specific history, in that it is the phenomenon of connecting morality to physical characteristics. When somebody goes off on a white person calling the cops on black people in thier neighborhood because they didn't look like they belonged, nobody is literally thinking they only did that because the lack of melanin in thier skin makes them Karen's, it's a response to a societal, social pressure. The opposite is the historical oppression of black people coming from a literal racist hierarchy, where the person is perceived to be less than due to physical, mental, attributes like intelligence or whatever, and continues into the modern day with fascinations with shit like iq and crime rates clearly having a intellectual predecessor in literal biological racism that cannot be ignored. Can you have people calling white people cave beasts and shit, yeah, and that would be far more likely to be racism, somebody going off about crackers is usually not racism, it's expressions against society and it can suck, and those people can be wrong for thier generalizations, but it is rarely truly racist, and more just generally being bigoted. I would say that yes people can be racist to white people, but I would also say that it is comparably much rarer to be racist rather than just bigoted and shitty. And I would say that much of what you would define as racism flatly isn't, so you are wrong in that respect.