Race traitor is a pejorative reference to a person who is perceived as supporting attitudes or positions thought to be against the interests or well-being of their own race. For example, one or both parties to an interracial relationship may be characterized as "race traitors". As another example, a person who supports affirmative action or other policies that allegedly benefit races other than his/her own may be characterized as a "race traitor". The term may indicate racialist attitudes on the part of those who use it.
The term is the source of the name of a quarterly magazine, Race Traitor, founded in 1993.
Famous quotes containing the words race and/or traitor:
“The Laws of Nature are just, but terrible. There is no weak mercy in them. Cause and consequence are inseparable and inevitable. The elements have no forbearance. The fire burns, the water drowns, the air consumes, the earth buries. And perhaps it would be well for our race if the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Man were as inevitable as the punishment of crimes against the Laws of Nature—were Man as unerring in his judgments as Nature.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“... what a strange time it was! Who knew his neighbor? Who was a traitor and who a patriot? The hero of to-day was the suspected of to-morrow.... There were traitors in the most secret council-chambers. Generals, senators, and secretaries looked at each other with suspicious eyes.... It is a great wonder that the city of Washington was not betrayed, burned, destroyed a half-dozen times.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)