Reverse racism

Reverse racism or reverse discrimination{{refn|name=Yee%257D%257D%257B%257Brefn%257Cname%253DCashmore%257D%257D%257B%257Brefn%257Cname%253DAnsell%257D%257D is a concept that portrays color-conscious programs for redressing racial inequality, such as affirmative action in the United States, as a form of anti-white racism on the part of black people and government agencies. It is commonly associated with conservative opposition to such programs.

Belief in reverse racism is widespread in the United States; however, there is little to no empirical evidence that whites suffer systemic discrimination. Racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. generally lack the power to damage the interests of white people, who remain the dominant group.{{refn|name=Dennis%257D%257D Claims of reverse racism tend to ignore such disparities in the exercise of power and authority, which scholars argue constitute an essential component of racism.{{refn|name=Yee%257D%257D%257B%257Brefn%257Cname%253DCashmore%257D%257D

Allegations of reverse racism by opponents of affirmative-action policies began to emerge prominently in the 1970s. While the U.S. dominates the debate over the issue, the concept of reverse racism has been used internationally to some extent wherever white supremacy has diminished, such as in post-apartheid South Africa. Allegations of reverse racism therefore form part of a racial backlash against gains by people of colour.

In the United States

The concept of reverse racism in the United States is commonly associated with conservative opposition to color-conscious policies aimed at addressing racial inequality, such as affirmative action. Concerns that the advancement of African Americans might cause harm to White Americans date back as far as the Reconstruction Era in the context of debates over providing reparations for slavery. Claims of reverse racism in the early 21st century tend to rely on anecdotes of isolated instances, often based on third- or fourth-hand reports, of a white person losing a job to a black person, for example.{{refn|name=Dennis%257D%257D The concept of reverse racism has also been used to characterize various expressions of hostility or indifference toward white people by members of minority groups.{{refn|name=Cashmore%257D%257D

Racial and ethnic minorities in the United States generally lack the power to damage the interests of white people, who remain the dominant group.{{refn|name=Dennis%257D%257D Relations between the groups have been historically shaped by European imperialism and long-standing oppression of blacks by whites.{{refn|name=Cashmore%257D%257D Such disparities in the exercise of power and authority are seen by scholars as an essential component of racism; in this view, individual beliefs and examples of favoring disadvantaged people do not constitute racism.{{refn|name=Yee%257D%257D%257B%257Brefn%257Cname%253DCashmore%257D%257D In a widely reprinted article, legal scholar Stanley Fish wrote that "'Reverse racism' is a cogent description of affirmative action only if one considers the cancer of racism to be morally and medically indistinguishable from the therapy we apply to it". While there has been little empirical study on the subject of reverse racism, the few existing studies have found little evidence that white males, in particular, are victimized by affirmative-action programs.

Civil rights movement

The term "reverse racism" came into use as the struggle for African-American rights divided the white community. In 1966, Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), publicly accused members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) of reverse racism in their efforts to exclude or expel white people from local government in Alabama to make room for black people. Williams argued the SNCC's intended "all-black" campaign in Alabama would drive white moderates out of the civil rights movement. "Black racism" was a more common term in this era, used to describe SNCC and groups like the Black Panthers.

Allegations of reverse racism emerged prominently in the 1970s, building on the racially color-blind view that any preferential treatment linked to membership in a racial group was morally wrong. Where past race-conscious policies such as Jim Crow have been used to maintain white supremacy, modern programs such as affirmative action aim to reduce racial inequality. Despite affirmative-action programs' successes in doing this, conservative opponents claimed that such programs constituted a form of anti-white racism. This view was boosted by the Supreme Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which said that racial quotas for minority students were discriminatory toward white people.{{refn|name=McBride%257D%257D

Public attitudes

While not empirically supported, the belief in reverse racism is widespread in the United States. Whites' belief in reverse racism has steadily increased since the civil rights movement of the 1960s{{refn|name=Newkirk%257D%257D and has contributed to the rise of conservative social movements such as the Tea Party.{{refn|name=Garner%257D%257D

Researchers at Tufts University and Harvard reported in 2011 that many white Americans felt as though they then suffered the greatest discrimination among racial groups, despite data to the contrary.{{refn|name=Fletcher%257D%257D%257B%257Brefn%257Cname%253DIngraham%257D%257D Whereas black respondents saw anti-black racism as a continuing problem, white ones tended to see such racism as a thing of the past, to the point that they saw prejudice against white people as being more prevalent. The authors wrote:

This emerging perspective is particularly notable because by nearly any metric [...] statistics continue to indicate drastically poorer outcomes for Black than White Americans.

Psychological studies with white Americans have shown belief in anti-white racism to be linked with support for the existing racial hierarchy in the U.S. as well as the idea of meritocracy, specifically the idea that success comes from "hard work". A majority (57%) of white respondents to a 2016 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute said they believed discrimination against whites was as significant a problem as discrimination against blacks, while only a minority of African Americans (29%) and Hispanics (38%) agreed.{{refn|name=Massie%257D%257D%2526lt%253Bref name="Jones%2520et%2520al%252E">Jones, Robert P.; et al. (June 23, 2016). How Immigration and Concerns About Cultural Changes Are Shaping the 2016 Election: Findings from the 2016 PRRI/Brookings Immigration Survey (PDF) (Report). Washington, D.C.: Public Religion Research Institute. p. 2. {{cite report}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)</ref>

The critical race theorist David Theo Goldberg argues that the notion of reverse racism represents a denial of the historical and contemporary reality of racial discrimination,{{refn|name=Pinder%257D%257D while the anthropologist Jane H. Hill writes that charges of reverse racism tend to deny the existence of white privilege and power in society.{{refn|name=Hill%257D%257D In Racism without Racists, the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva argues that white people's perceptions of reverse racism result from what he calls the new dominant ideology of "color-blind racism", which treats racial inequality as a thing of the past, and therefore allows it to continue by opposing concrete efforts at reform.

Legal challenges

Legal challenges concerning so-called "reverse racism" date back as far as the 1970s as asserted in such cases as Regents of the University of California v. Bakke; Gratz v. Bollinger; and Grutter v. Bollinger (regarding discrimination in higher education admissions) and Ricci v. DeStefano (regarding employment discrimination). The idea of reverse racism later gained widespread use in debates and legal actions concerning affirmative action in the United States.{{refn|name=Sanneh%257D%257D

In South Africa

The term has been used by both black and white South Africans after the end of apartheid. Accusations of reverse racism have been leveled particularly at government efforts to transform the demographics of South Africa's white-dominated civil service.

Nelson Mandela in 1995 described "racism in reverse" when Black students demonstrated in favor of changing the racial makeup of staff at South African universities. Students denied Mandela's claim and argued that a great deal of ongoing actual racism persisted from apartheid.

Mandela was later himself charged with reverse racism, during 1997 proceedings of the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission and for supporting the 1998 Employment Equity Bill.

Mixed-race South Africans have also sometimes claimed to be victimized by reverse racism of the new government. Similar accusations have been leveled by Indian and Afrikaner groups, who feel that they have not been dominant historically but now suffer from discrimination by the government.

Helen Suzman, a prominent white anti-apartheid politician, charged the African National Congress and the Mbeki administration with reverse racism since Mandela's departure in 1999.

South African critics of the "reverse racism" concept use similar arguments as those employed by Americans.

See also

• Reverse discrimination

Further reading

• Ansell, Amy Elizabeth (1997). New Right, New Racism: Race and Reaction in the United States and Britain. London, UK: Macmillan. pp. 132–138. ISBN 0-33-364945-1.
• Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo (2018). Racism without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-44-227622-2.
• Chang, Robert S. (1995). "Reverse Racism!: Affirmative Action, the Family, and the Dream That Is America" (PDF). Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly. 23: 1115–34.
• Fish, Stanley (November 1993). "Reverse Racism, or How the Pot Got to Call the Kettle Black". The Atlantic.
• Kivel, Paul (2011). Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice (3rd ed.). New Society Publishers. pp. 74–75. ISBN 978-0-86571-688-9.
• Song, Miri (March 2014). "Challenging a culture of racial equivalence". The British Journal of Sociology. 65 (1): 107–29. doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12054.
• Suiter, Tad (2016). "Reverse Racism: A Discursive History". In Kiuchi, Yuya (ed.). Race Still Matters: The Reality of African American Lives and the Myth of Postracial Society. Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press. ISBN 978-1-43-846273-8. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Valelly, Richard M., ed. (2010). Encyclopedia of U.S. political history. Vol. 7 : The clash of conservatism and liberalism, 1976 to present. Washington, D.C.: CQ Press. pp. 318–. ISBN 978-0-87-289318-4.