1 of 40

Write now Article Tools

Reverse racism may be defined as the tendency of a minority race to feel (and express) prejudice against a majority race. A few days ago Barack Obama addressed this issue. His pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright has been found guilty of racial stereotyping and racial hatred. Obama in his speech to the nation tried to explain the origins of these prejudices.

The white race (a misnomer that I will use here nonetheless) feels reverse discrimination when Affirmative Action is used to justify racial quotas. The white race feels threatened by the anger of black people. Whites are angry when they lose their jobs to minorities due to "quotas." Some whites even feel justified in their extreme views, by citing statistics that seem to justify their "racial superiority." Whites have lower crime rates, lower illegitimacy and abandonment, etc.

I think that Obama understands the issue better than most people. Like him, I was raised in Hawaii, where racial mixture is normal. Certainly racial prejudice and racial hierarchies exist in Hawaii, but the races have been intermingling for generations long before this became socially acceptable in the United States. Being of mixed race is normal in Hawaii. Finer distinctions are made a Korean is different from a Chinese, who is in turn different from a Japanese or Cambodian while in Mainland U.S. all of these may be lumped as "Asian." Racial mixtures due to marriage stand alongside racial mixtures due to religion or to ethnicity. Skin colors are finely discerned, from black to brown to gold to freckle-faced white.

The "other face of discrimination" is the face that feels offended when a minority is affirmed. To look beyond ourselves for a moment, consider Germany. The Germans of today suffer from the shadow of their parents' racism. Certainly Hitler's generation was responsible for genocide, and today's German youth still pay the price. It may seem unfair, but was their ancestors' behavior fair?

Skinheads still thrive in Europe, spreading their message of Aryan superiority and hatred.

Unfortunately in America racism is not history. Only a few years ago a black man in Texas was chained to a pickup truck and dragged until his head came lose from his body. The motive was racial.

We white people can lament our bad fortune at being categorized, stigmatized and attacked for mere racial reasons yet how many of us really fear for our lives? How many of us face the prospect of decapitation? Black anger, although verbalized, is too often it is turned back on itself minorities attack other minorities because no one wants to be on the bottom of the social ladder.

When will the privileged recognize that they are privileged, and stop stigmatizing the historical underclass for their ancestral anger? When will we all find a path leading out of this "justifiable" hatred?

I don't remember who said it, but I can only agree - "We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately."

Learn more about this author, Norma Jean Bishop.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Reverse racism: The other face (of discrimination)?
We want to hear your view. Write now!