In a comment to my earlier post on reverse racism whatsername said...
Well, we want to let people tell their own stories, and let white people say things that are patently ridiculous (like the results of that Tufts survey) so we can debunk it and show how fucked up and wrong it is...right? Cuz I mean, every measure of discrimination shows that white people are still advantaged, and usually puts Black or Native people as the least advantaged. So whatever these people are feeling or thinking, they're factually fucking wrong. And that's really important in the context of ally-ship and racial consciousness, right?I'm not here to debunk anyone's story, especially not before I've heard it. I asked for personal anecdotes about white people who have encountered reverse racism. It's hardly fair to start with the assumption those comments will be patently ridiculous, fucked up and wrong. Or to show them a bunch of charts and statistics which disprove their lived experience after they have given me an honest reply. I am telling people to listen to POCs when they talk about racism and avoid minimizing or denying their experiences: it behooves me to model good behavior.
A few months back I went round and round with Wade Long, who insisted that there was no such thing as "black culture." The same thing I said then applies now. The term "reverse racism" conveys meaning for pretty much every English-speaking American. Those poor unenlightened privilege-choked racists who disagree with all those measures of discrimination may be "factually fucking wrong." They still outnumber you by a considerable margin and once outside a dozen or so urban areas they have a great deal more political clout. And if you don't think their concerns are worth hearing there are plenty of demagogues who will lend them a sympathetic ear. Here's Pat Buchanan, who was once a fringe figure but is now pretty firmly in the Republican center-right, with some of his thoughts on anti-white racism.
As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Is Barack Obama aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?
Is Barack aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?
We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena. And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.To date the accounts I've seen of reverse racism differ considerably from reports of the way POCs experience racism. And of course the concept is problematic: the two articles I linked to earlier and the quote from Buchanan should make that abundantly clear. But I am not in charge of the dictionary. And if a majority of white people (who are after all my target audience) believe reverse racism exists, then I might want to hear what they are talking about rather than dismissing their accounts out of hand.
Besides, I'm not so sure I'm in the business of making "allies" anyway. The people I am aiming for are the well-meaning white people who genuinely want to be nice to people of color. They don't want to be perceived as racist and they aren't, at least not in the "violent skinhead Nazi" way most Americans use the word. And so I'm providing pointers on things which POCs are likely to see as racist, along with some historical and social context as to why. I'd be thrilled if this leads to them becoming more politically conscious. But if it leads to less moments of awkwardness and miscommunication between them and the POCs they encounter, I still chalk it up as a net gain.
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4 comments:
I don't really think this counts, I wouldn't exactly use the phrase "reverse racism" for it, and I'm hesitant to even mention it, but I (who am white) sometimes catch shit from some of my (black female) friends about "stealing their man" because my partner is West Indian. I think they're mostly joking, but sometimes (mostly when we're not entirely sober) there's some real vitriol behind it that makes me uneasy. Now, I am IN NO WAY comparing that to actual racism, but its still not ok.
Though I can imagine that he's not totally off-base, I would be disinclined to base anything solely on what Pat Buchanan has to say about crime statistics without additional sources. If only because it contradicts everything I've ever heard from black women about white-on-black sexual violence. There could be a difference when it comes to reports vs. convictions, for example.
When it comes to robberies, however, I think that would be more an issue of economics. People in suburbs have more valuables, and less reason to resort to petty theft. (And those who do resort to petty theft are, again, going to gain more from stealing in suburban areas.)
See, the things that The Professor is talking about, is not what I'm talking about in my comment, and isn't the way I've seen other white people mean when they say "reverse racism" (which I've seen the most of in discussions about affirmative action/ethnicity based scholarships and the like). And I absolutely do think we should talk about the kinds of thing you're talking about Professor, in the context of inter-racial relationships those sorts of things are really important. That is NOT what I was talking about in my comment that Kenaz is responding to. I was talking about the Tufts survey and similar things to that. Not about dismissing personal stories out of hand, but about hearing them and having the conversation about them in a critical/analytic/knowledge producing way. That's not always going to mean the story is patently ridiculous. The Professor's surely isn't. But that Tufts survey? Yes, yes it is.
But the way I'm reading this series, and the whole "Don't be that White person" idea, is that this isn't about challenging people in a real way, it's just about informing them about things that might piss other people off, which in my view teaches them how to avoid those things, but I don't really know if it at all develops an understanding about why those things are important enough to piss people off in the first place, particularly if we're not going to challenge misconceptions and RACISM inherent in -some- of the responses one is surely to get about a topic like "reverse racism". And that concerns me.
@whatsername
From what I've read of the series so far, you seem to be correct. The series isn't about challenging misconceptions or deep understanding of why these things are offensive.
To use a less charged example.
When someone is learning table manners they don't have to know that the reason one doesn't put one's elbow's on the table is because in the middle ages one didn't have as much room as we do now at the dinner table and putting your elbows on the table deprived people of much needed room to eat. You just need to know not to put your elbows on the table.
Not all of us have any interest at all in becoming activists or allies or are activists in completely different areas. Some of us just want to know the inter-racial equivalent of which fork is the right one for salad so we can learn it, use it, and get on with our lives. No personal transformation, no racial dark night of the soul, no deep introspection.
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