Super-Double-Reverse Racism

Brandon wrote a while back about "class warfare" and how, essentially, conservative tax policies heavily favoring the wealthy were in no way less class warfare than new policies taxing the wealthy more heavily. His thesis is that you can't accept an unfair advantage and then cry foul when the advantage shifts slightly-- that just ain't right.

This line of logic brought to mind another term: reverse racism. This term boils my blood because of all the implications it carries. Though the term has been applied to people of every race at some point or another, most often it refers to black people in America, so that will be my focus here.

Essentially, the situation is the same as Brandon's class warfare theory. You have a system which, when left to its own devices, favors white people over black people. Plain and simple; it does. We call this system the "status quo" and assume it be perfectly natural and normal. Then when someone comes along and wants to shift some tiny aspect of this system to favor non-white males, a lot of assholes in the media scream "reverse racism" as though Bill O'Reilly is being packed off to a plantation.

I have done a ton of research and written way too much outlining specific studies and statistics, but they were very lengthy and obscured my basic point. If you want statistics, I can supply them in large amounts. Suffice to say that a black man in (the vast majority of) America is more likely to 1) be pulled over/searched than a white man, 2) receive higher bail amounts for similar crimes than a white man, 3) receive harsher sentences for similar crimes than a white man, including the death penalty (this is the reason Charles Manson is alive today: the Supreme Court commuted all death sentences in the 1970s when it was discovered that blacks were four times more likely to be executed than whites) and 4) be seen as "inherent troublemakers" by Parole Officers rather than people who did bad things because of "factors outside of their control".

The statistics can, and have, filled books, so I'll spare you too much jabbering. Fact is, if you look at virtually any aspect of our society, whites are favored over blacks. Many of these disparities are woven into the fabric of our social system as ideas and concepts and policies (both official and unofficial) which give advantages (implicitly or explicity) to whites and disproportionately affect blacks.

Example: our government freely admits that the psychotropic and physiological effects of all types of cocaine ('crack' and powdered cocaine) are the same. The only difference is that crack is cheap and favored by poor minorities while cocaine is expensive and used almost exclusively by affluent whites. So the two drugs do identical damage and are identically dangerous, yet crack and powdered cocaine are penalized at the federal level in a 1:100 ratio-- for cocaine, a conviction of "possession with intent to distribute" carries a five year sentence for quantities of 500 grams or more. But for crack, just 5 grams gets you the same sentence.

Translation: someone dealing $45,000 worth of cocaine can (and often will) receive a lesser sentence than someone peddling $500 worth of crack.

In addition, crack is the ONLY drug that carries a mandatory prison sentence for first offense possession-- a 5 year MINIMUM. The MAXIMUM sentence for simple possession of any other drug, including powdered cocaine, is 1 year. In what universe does this make sense? How is the minimum for one drug 5 times higher than the maximum for an equally dangerous drug?

Any rational human being can see that something smells funny. For some reason, in the United States, a lot of lawmakers write harsher laws on drugs used primarily by blacks. For some reason, a lot of judges hand out harsher sentences to blacks. For some reason, a lot of prosecutors pursue tougher penalties for blacks. For some reason, parole officers have a more favorable view of their white parolees than their black ones.

In terms of employment, the situation is no better. In 2008, roughly 70% of those entering the workforce were women and racial minorities. Only 30% were white men. Yet white men received roughly half of all available jobs. The only logical argument in favor of this is that white people had better educations and deserved the jobs more. That's fine, until we accept that college admission practices also tend to favor whites over blacks. In fact, the only time in American history when, on a large scale, black enrollment in 4-year colleges got even close to a representative percentage of the population was during the era of 'affirmative action'.

Now, affirmative action is hardly a situation which anyone can defend as "ideal" and quota systems are not perfect, but it seems hard to argue that they aren't more fair than the current situation. There are strong arguments to be made that quota systems are necessary to get the ball rolling on integration, and there are also strong arguments to be made that affirmative action does more harm than good in the long run. I am not qualified to make that call-- that's something for history to judge.

What I do know is that since affirmative action programs officially ended on college campuses, fewer black students have been admitted each year despite the fact that blacks make up a larger percentage of applicants than ever before.

Hardly sounds like a level playing field, does it?

Much like rehab, the first step to solving the problem of racial inequality is to first admit that there is one. I don't know why certain iniquities exist along racial lines, but I can't pretend that they don't. The system in which we live is racially biased (in several important regards) in favor of white people, yet any attempt to correct that system is called "reverse racism" with all the negative connotations that self-righteous pundits can muster.

Even worse is when ridiculous arguments are presented to suggest that black people actually have the upper hand, both legally and socially.

No, I cannot say the N-word in music or otherwise. Dave Chapelle and DMX can. Great. So black people can say the N-word and white people can't-- is that it? Is that the only advantage you can think of?

As Chris Rock says, "last time I checked, that's about the only advantage to being black. Wanna trade places? Fine, you shout n***er and I'll raise interest rates!"

This entire debate drives me crazy because the majority of people who scream "reverse racism" do so without admitting that the status quo which "reverse racism" alters is, essentially, racist.

We, as the few white men (and Janelle) who read this blog, have to be realistic, and we can't be hypocrites. We can't enjoy advantages based on race and then cry foul when that advantage shifts slightly.

If you want to cry "reverse racism" then you are free to do so. But doing so without admitting that the status quo is inherently racist makes you disingenuous and hypocritical. And to freely use any unfair advantage while denying others that same right makes you an asshole.