Thursday, August 31, 2006

Tolerating racism - on Oprah.


That would be reverse racism.

(Photograph of Paul Robeson as Othello and Peggy Ashcroft as Desdemona from the 1930 London production of Shakespeare's Othello.)

The gospel according to Oprah evidently tolerates reverse racism. Coming in from doing yard work I smoked a cigarette and turned on TV to watch the news. I was too early and caught a bit from the Oprah show with the stars of some new movie dealing with interracial couples. Instead of turning the channel, I watched as she had a group of black men discussing the growing trend of black women dating white men. (It's okay with them for the black men to date outside of their race, but not so much for the women.) They made statements such as , "They're just after money or status." when they date white men. And in response to black women stating that they can't find good black men, they respond, "here we are". All of that is fine with me - I don't care about interracial dating, but I started to think about what had been said. If these were white guys talking about the same subject, stating the same opinions, there would be outrage expressed over obvious racist statements. And it would not end on the Oprah show. Maybe I missed something, but it sure sounded like reverse racism to me.

3 comments:

  1. Speaking as a white girl who dated a black man and thought she wanted to marry him...there's no such thing as "reverse" racism.

    Racism is racism, pure and simple, no matter what the source. If you place the appropriate term, "hate", in place of "racism", the reverse of "hate" would be LOVE...and thus the oxymoron of "reverse racism" is a completely meaningless term within the context with which is is used in our culture.


    And I agree...if it were as you described, there would be major outrage.

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  2. You're right- there would be an uproar.

    I've heard of reverse sexism- when a woman is the offender- and if she isn't held as accountable as a man would be, I think it's more of a double standard.

    ?

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  3. Anonymous8:04 PM

    I was one of two white girls while attending a school in Minneapolis. I was kicked out of class everyday, called honkey, white trash, piece of s..t, dirty little white girl. Told to go back to my own color, stick with your own etc..For no reason other than being white. And you know what their reason is for it? You deserve it because of what your ancestors did to mine. You deserve it because of what we've suffered under the "white man" BS. I would not consider myself racist per se but I definitely do not like the black culture. They tend to be loud, uncouth and mouthy. There is a black guy who gets on the bus every morning and sings out loud to himself. Now sure one could say that anyone could do this..I've never seen anyone BUT a black person act this way. Racist? Whatever. My experience has taught me to be cautious. Most black people that hate whites have NO bad personal experience but trumped up charges of "hate" they dug up from some black book of antiwhite propaganda.

    If I wore a Tshirt that said "White Power" OMGosh people would freak. But yet, "Black Power" is okay. If I had a button that said, "Stop Hating Whites" OMGosh can you imagine. But yet, not one bats an eyelash when someone bashes on whites for some thing that happened over 100 years ago that has nothing to do with them.

    I'm of European decent and proud of it. Why can't I say it or show it without being accused of hate? Reverese racism is a fine term because racism has come to mean "anybody BUT whites"
    STOP WHITE HATRED NOW. Is what I say.

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