Reverse Racism: For White People, By White People

Here’s the bottom line: you can be discriminated against because you are white, just like you can be discriminated against for ANY quality, characteristic, or trait on an individual or institutional level. You can NOT be the recipient of racism if you are white. This offends almost every white person I have ever spoken to about the matter. Whites want to co-opt racism and make it their own.  Why they are so hell bent on insisting that they, too, experience racism I believe has a direct correlation to their understanding, or lack there of, of their White privilege. Here is the difference between racism and discrimination: racism explicitly relies on an institutional (not individual) position of power. It is systemic discrimination. You being called a cracker is not racist. If anything, it is a reaction to racism experienced from a culture that positions White at the top of our social hierarchy. It is another way to sweep under the rug the real issues of race we have in our society and culture. Reverse racism tries to make the colonizer the colonized, the perpetrator the victim. The theory of reverse racism is racist. When half of the White male population is imprisoned, when whites are followed in stores on suspicions of theft, when White people experience racial profiling, we could maybe begin to talk about how whites experience racism. Until then, I think it is important to really understand what we are talking about when we discuss issues of race. It doesn’t mean you might not experience something negative because you are white. It just means it isn’t racism.