Friday, September 23, 2011
Reverse Racism
While thinking about the misrepresentation and lack of black actors in media, films, and tv shows, a move called Guess Who came to mind. It's about a black woman who gets engaged to a white man and brings him home to her family. When the cab first pulls up to her parent's home, the man and woman get out of the car as well as the black cab driver. Immediately the woman's father comes out and shakes the hand of the black cab driver assuming that he is his daughter's finacne and the white man is the cab driver. This makes me wonder why people automatically assume one will marry within our own race. I think society (meaning media, history, customs, etc) plays a big role in this factor, which ultimately leads to inter-racial marriages being looked down upon, and the assumptions that one will marry someone within the same race. Further into the movie the woman's father becomes furious with that fact that she is engaged to a white man. I understand that this makes for an entertaining movie, however, I feel that if the races were reversed, and a white woman brought an all black man home to meet her father, this movie would be considered racist. Because a minority group (in this case a black family) is discriminating against someone from the majority group (in this case, a white man), and because we live in a "superior white" society, that makes this movie okay, and even funny. If the races were reversed, the movie would be an outrage, people would complain, I don't even think it would sell because it would be considered extremely racists. I don't think reverse racism is acceptable. I feel that discrimination towards any group is wrong, and I don't think media should portray this reverse racism as funny, because it's taking our society in the wrong direction. It will even continue to disciminate against inter-racial marriages (although like all movies this one has a happy ending).
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Michelle,
ReplyDeleteI think it is important that we think critically about the power dynamics involved in what you are calling "reverse racism." We need to think of the way the concept of reverse racism, the idea that People of Color are somehow racist against Whites, in many ways ignores the way institutional power has historically operated in the United States. As we have seen in our class, People of Color have continually been systematically excluded from institutional positions of power within the United States. The concept of "reverse racism" in many ways denies the social construction, long history and power hierarchies of racial relations in the United States because it does not see the ways that society is structured based on a hierarchy that positions whites at the top of the power structure. As we have stressed all semester, it is important that we think of the ways that race operates institutionally and systemically rather than just on a micro or individual level. And the claims of reverse racism in many ways ignores the ways race operates in these larger social and institutional structures. As a group we should ask the complex question, can someone be racist without access to the power needed to make that racism tangible?
We also need to be critical of what exactly is happening and achieved when a privileged racial group (whites) make claims that a less privileged racial group (blacks) are being racist or acting based on racial discrimination and the ways that the very notion of reverse racism can be used as a tool to continue the subjugation of People of Color.
Rather than writing a long essay on how problematic reverse racism is, I will just refer everyone to an article by noted anti-Racist scholar Tim Wise, who confronts directly what is so troubling about the idea of "reverse racism"
http://www.raceandhistory.com/selfnews/viewnews.cgi?newsid1024893033,80611,.shtml