Reverse Racism - in The United States

In The United States

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 whites from local government in Alabama to make room for blacks. Williams argued that SNCC's (unsuccessful) "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.

The Supreme Court has held that racial preferences in university admissions for minority students do not violate Equal Protection in cases such as Grutter v. Bollinger. In 2012, a monumental case involving this issue was heard by the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas. This is a clear cut case of inequality and racial disparagement.

The term gained widespread use in debates and legal actions concerning affirmative action. It appeared resurgent on the political scene with the successful candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008.

A recent study conducted at Tufts and Harvard sought to quantify perceptions of reverse racism by surveying Americans who identified as White or Black. The study's title, "White People See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing", indicates its findings: that Whites feel as though they now suffer disproportionately from racism. (Blacks felt that anti-Black racism had decreased over time, but did not perceive increases in anti-White bias.) These results were constant for people of different ages and levels of education. This study has made the act of reverse racism against whites even more apparent, since reverse racism has increased but racial minority groups see no need to address the issue as a whole, primarily because they have the most to gain from perpetrating reverse racism.

Critics of the term "reverse racism" have called it a myth or an oxymoron, saying that racism entails systemic oppression and inequality. However, there is strong evidence of both systematic oppression and inequality, and it would be negligent to believe racism could exist but reverse racism couldn't. Furthermore, reverse racism can also be synonymous with Anti-racism, which is often one in the same and is used as a detractor from the truth of a situation to create oppression and inequality. Reverse racism can also apply to those outside of racial groups. Non-Caucasian racists often use reverse racism and Anti-racism as a crutch to call groups they are racist against, racists. This gives the illusion of a moral high ground in disputes, which has been very beneficial to minority racial groups in creating oppression and inequality in their favor.