Reverse Racism

I have been thinking about this subject for a few days now and I have been in a steady state of “humbled as shit.” Coming to the realization that black people can’t be racist boils down to the comprehension of racist vs. prejudice. Words. The meanings. Powerful.

This conversation was started by my younger brother who listened to The Breakfast Club interview with Tariq Nasheed. Tariq Nasheed made complete sense with how he broke down racism to being power based and gave examples of that power.

Charlamagne tha God: Do you consider yourself racist?

Tariq Nasheed: No no, black people can’t be racist. Racism is power based. Black racism is name calling…See, people try to compare name calling to a system that will gentrify you, mass incarcerate you, murder you, medically incarcerate you, there is no comparison. It’s a false equivalency. If there’s a white person that hates a black person, there’s a system that’s going to protect that white person anyway.

Merriam Webster says racism is a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

An inherent superiority, the basic nature of power, has to be present for one race of people, the color of one’s skin, to demand this rank and way of speaking. When black people have had to fight for so long to be uplifted to the place they are now in our society, still systematically oppressed, it does not matter how much affirmative action you give, the disenfranchisement and inequality that black people have faced can never make them racist.

The understanding that many people of color feel the way they do because of generations of this intricately developed systemic oppression, prejudice is the befitting term for how one would react.

Merriam-Webster’s definition of prejudice: injury or damage resulting from some judgment or action of another in disregard of one’s rights.

There tends to be a cause to every action and I, myself will try to keep my eyes, heart, mind, and experience open to hearing my black brethren. An article that Zeba Bay wrote for the Huffington Post back in January of this year made sense to me when I first read it but now that I am even more aware of how ignorant I was to what she was trying to say, her article has sent me to a place of pure empathy and I am forever indebted for her passion to enlighten those that are part of the problem. Thank you.

If someone besides myself ends up reading this heart bleed, please listen to Tariq Nasheed’s whole interview on the Breakfast Club and please completely read all of Zeba Bay’s article. If you are white like me, we won’t ever understand so all we can do is listen and try to be the open door for future change.

Also, I hope we, as a nation, can get a conversation started about what reparations will look like for black folks. I suggest reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Case For Reparations and watching his interview by Ezra Klein of Vox.