How much can a white girl know about racism? I’ve never taken a Black Studies class, never lived in a community where I was a minority, and never had skin that wasn’t pale and freckly. I am perhaps as qualified concerning the subject of racism as Rush Limbaugh is on the subject of feminism. So when pioneer of the “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” discrimination experiment Jane Elliot informed last Wednesday’s audience that reverse racism is a misguided fantasy, I didn’t know what to think. I went to a high school that was 50 percent black and was a veritable fountain of racial tension. There were times when I felt that certain black people disliked me because I was white. A friend was ostracized by his black peers because he dated white girls. I occasionally heard black people use white racial slurs. To me, this smacked of “reverse racism.”Then Elliott explained herself further, and said that what we call reverse racism is really a reaction to daily “regular” racism. Blacks being “racist” toward whites is not racism because it is a natural reaction to the discrimination they experience every day. Let’s think about this. To translate it into my white girl feminist language, I get annoyed by boys not because they have penises, but rather because of the way they sometimes act toward me. It’s a reaction. But even if this reaction is justified, it’s still stereotyping all boys in my case, and stereotyping all whites in the case of black people. That’s racism, isn’t it? So am I sexist because I think most guys are sexist? Are you reversely racist if you think white people are racist and react to that by being racist in defense? This thing goes in circles. As a black friend tried to clarify for me (you know, the one black person whose opinion will now represent every black American), reverse racism is a reaction as well as an assumption. You react to past experiences while assuming that every white person will treat you the same way. But that’s the same as white people thinking that every black person will mug them because they were mugged once. Not reverse anything. Of course, we can also think about the term “reverse racism” itself. What is the reverse of racism? Absence of racism. But minorities acting racist toward non-minorities is certainly not the absence of racism, it’s just, shall we say, non-traditional.Another problem with this term is that it describes the world in black and white terms, implying that the “reverse” of white is black and that there is no color in between. What about Hispanic people acting racist toward African-Americans? Or Irish people being racist towards Italians? What kinds of racisms are these?How can we pin “reverse racism” down? Is it an excuse on the part of white people so that they can claim racism is just human nature? If blacks are racist toward whites, then racism must be an inherent trait in all of us, right? Sure, whatever. It seems that on the less confusing and more dangerous side, reverse racism is a convenient tool for white people to use in order to destroy programs like affirmative action. Remember the two white boys who couldn’t get into Michigan? Instead of hitting themselves for not effectively utilizing the countless advantages they were given simply because of their sex and skin color, they cried reverse racism and sued for not getting into that sorry old school.Racism, “reverse” or not, is an evil beast. Just because minority racism directed at whites can perhaps be understood, it is not necessarily justified. And it is also no easier to understand than white racism toward blacks. Judging an individual because of past experiences with people who look like them may be a common part of human behavior, but that doesn’t make it right. These thoughts are not conclusions. Daily experiences may change my conception of racism a hundred times. But to write off reverse racism as justified is justifying all racism, and to accept it is to accept all racism.
Jessica Weeks is a frequent Lantern contributor. Her column appears on Mondays.
