The Fallacy of Reverse Racism

Growing up in the South as a white person, I have heard many different accounts of how my like-racial peers have been victims of "reverse racism". They believe that because they are considered to be racist if they say anything against a group of color that people of color can also be racist if they say anything against white people. For a while I believed that they were correct, that racism can go both ways. However, it has recently been brought to my attention that this is absolutely not the case.

Racism is the idea that one racial group holds prejudices toward another in order to reinforce one as being superior and the other as inferior. Because of this definition, there can never be a case of reverse racism in which a white person is being discriminated against because white supremacy is so rampant and ingrained in our society. Regardless of any remarks that a person of color can make toward a white person, there is nothing that can be said that will truly make a white person feel as the inferior because society is constantly telling them that they aren’t. Sure, a person of color can be prejudice towards white people, which may not necessarily always be justified. However, it is nothing compared to the constant ways that white people make different racial groups feel when they make disparaging remarks because there is no history of total racial oppression to accompany it.

Recently in one of my other course, our professor showed us a video on this very topic, in the form of a bit by comedian Aamer Rahmar. (I’ll post the link below.) In this video, he talks about how his white friend accused him (a person of color) of being racist for constantly making fun of white people in his acts. His friend claimed that if he were to do the same thing toward other races he would be labeled as being a racist. Rahmar’s use of comedy to describe how this idea is absurd took the route of time travel in which he convinces an invasion of Europe by non-white nations instead of vice versa, and the use of policy to constantly make sure how that thiis invaded group would be inferior is the only way this can exist. While truly hilarious, it is also very educational in how racism cannot be turned around back on the group in power.

Reverse racism does not exist, so it’s time for white people to stop feeling like the victim of something that is imaginary.


Aamer Rahmar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M