Reverse Racism - It Doesn't Exist

Reverse Racism: Where did it come from?

Whether it's the Tea Party , Bill O'Reilly calling for Shirley Sherrod's resignation, Rush Limbaugh in disapproval of Sonia Sotomayor's commission, Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann's misrepresentations of the President - They all have one thing in common; They're the same sheep who take words like Socialism away from their meaning to spark emotions that can help them win elections and get sponsored. Now, they're just making up new ones: Reverse racism.

What it doesn't mean:

We hear about the benign examples of "reverse racism" that infer majorities are being singled out (really) and are being limited from opportunities; The job that could have benefited the more qualified candidate or the scholarship that could have went to the other student with higher SAT scores. Except someone didn't just wake up on the left side of the bed one morning to say, "Oh gee, how do I kill off this guilty white symbiote living inside of my innately racist Caucasian shell?" In order to state affirmative action as racist (or reverse racist), you would have to leave reality and reside in a funnel vacuum where context is null. There's that tiny thing, you know from American History, that resolves why judicial review replaced nullification.

According to a 1978 ruling by the Supreme Court:

An admissions department may then attempt to "redress" these findings of past discrimination by considering an applicant's race as a "plus" factor among many in its admissions decisions. Such a race-conscious consideration, however, may only be one of many factors used in assessing each applicant, and the race of each applicant may never be a preclusive factor in granting admission. 

This applies to education, hiring and contracting: Affirmative action isn't bequeathing people jobs who aren't qualified to interview for them - it's a plus factor among many different considerations after the hiring process is at an end. After being qualified. After being interviewed. After Richard Pryor calls you a dead honkey. Only when a company has a proven history of discrimination, then does affirmative action apply. This discrimination is defined by current and past effects. The state "has a legitimate and substantial interest in eliminating the disabling effects of identified discrimination."

It is from those very reasons, affirmative action isn't illegal. Quotas, however, are; In the same 1978 hearing by an apparently liberal Supreme Court, California vs Bakke held that quotas based on race or gender were unconstitutional. So if someone says that a business or group is interviewing or reviewing based on race or gender quotas, particularly in circumstances of education, hiring and contracting - it's either who they're talking about is doing it illegally or the person who makes the claim is, well, lying to you.
  
It's racism. In reverse. No, literally.

Let's go further to say that even if people were getting hired by terms of race or gender, then wouldn't that in itself be ...racism? In other words, isn't any behavior or attitude held on the single pillar of race alone defined as racist? What makes it reverse racist?

Merriam Webster

One explanation in an attempt to answer this question was that reverse racism or discrimination is differentiated because the group being disadvantaged is labeled a majority. There is not validity in that argument because racism isn't based on the size of the target or whether the action is positive or negative; it's based on race. So what's the reverse part for?

Well, in a grammatical sense reverse racism would be the opposite of racism (or racism, in reverse). By the standards of semantics that would be the behavior of upholding the equality of all races - which, in illustrations of reverse racism, doesn't happen. The only consistency about reverse racism I can find is that it applies to, and is prevalently used by, white people. Since that alone doesn't define the word, maybe we should accept it for what it really is - a grammatical error.

In accords to #1 definition on Urban Dictionary (The only dictionary website that had the word...and don't get a wiki-fit because we all know to have critical credibility you can't source Wikipedia in it's unreliable lonesome):

I'm going out on a limb here people, but bear with me... Reverse racism, in actuality, shouldn't even be a term... It's described as the act of racism against a majority (typically used in context of whites). But...isn't that just plain old regular racism? Last time I checked, Caucasian WAS a race. And I'm willing to bet that any other majority suffering from "reverse racism" is a race too. So why isn't it just racism? Why give it a fancy new term? If you wanted to take the literal definition, reverse racism would actually be the opposite: supporting a race as equal to another. Just a thought.
by Atticus Apr 23, 2005