On Reverse Racism: Three Thought-Experiments

By On November 27, 2014 · 115 Comments · In Social Justice, Toleration

For some, especially on the right, reverse racism is just as serious and problematic as regular racism. For others, especially on the left, reverse racism is impossible; a black person, say, may be hostile toward or prejudiced against white people, but cannot count as racist toward them.

This disagreement is due, in part, to a further disagreement as to whether racism, and/or the badness of racism, is essentially a matter of individual attitudes and actions, or essentially a matter of systematic power relations. And the same issues arise with sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, and so on.

I think both sides are wrong. That is, I think reverse racism (along with sexism, etc.) is a) possible and real, but b) less seriously problematic than the regular sort. Let me say why.

I’ll start with a thought-experiment designed to convince those who already accept the existence of reverse racism (etc.) that it is less seriously problematic than the regular sort.

Thought-Experiment #1: Bobby Shafto’s Burger Shack

Bobby Shafto has an odd obsession with freckles, specifically facial freckles. He likes people with an even number of freckles on their face. (That includes people with no freckles on their face, since zero is an even number.) But he has an aversion toward people with an odd number of freckles on their face, and he refuses to allow them into his Burger Shack, either as employees or as customers. In his world, which we’ll suppose to be ours as well, Shafto’s particular prejudice is of course highly unusual. But on Twin Earth, let’s say, the same prejudice is widely shared among the even-freckled, and as the even-freckled command the lion’s share of economic and political power, they are able to make their prejudice effective.

Suppose Bobby Shafto and his odd discrimination policy really exist somewhere. We might well disapprove. But how concerned would we be about it? Not very, I suspect. And the reason isn’t hard to find: Shafto’s prejudice is so rare that it causes very little overall harm; it’s easy enough to find other places to work or to eat.

By contrast, when we consider the Twin-Earth scenario in which Shafto’s prejudice is the norm among those with economic and political power, then the life-choices of odd-freckled people would start to be systematically constrained, and the prejudice in question would begin to look like something in need of being condemned and combated in a serious and organised way. (Such combating need not necessarily take the form of legal coercion; but that’s a distinct issue.)

When I say that prejudice against odd-freckled people is a worse evil on Twin Earth than in our world, I don’t just mean that it has worse consequences (though that’ part of what I mean). I also mean that it evinces a worse motive and character – since it involves knowingly contributing to ongoing oppression, as Shafto’s does not.

So discrimination against the odd-freckled is a serious evil on Twin Earth; but our world is not Twin Earth. And considering Bobby Shafto in our world – Bobby Shafto the isolated eccentric weirdo – I ask those who think reverse racism is as seriously problematic as regular racism whether they also think Shafto’s discrimination policy is as seriously problematic as regular racism. If – as I predict – they mostly don’t, that would seem to show that they’re committed to acknowledging that the badness of racism is at least in large part a matter of the systematic constraining of people’s options – of their oppression, in Marilyn Frye’s sense. But that means that reverse racism – i.e., racism by an oppressed group against a non-oppressed group – cannot be as serious an evil as racism by a non-oppressed group against an oppressed group.

My argument presupposes, of course, that blacks are an oppressed group and that whites are not. (And ditto mutatis mutandis for women vs. men, etc.) Obviously some of the people who worry about reverse racism will deny that supposition. I think they’re crazy to deny it, but that’s a debate I’m not getting into here. For purposes of this post I’m addressing those who grant that blacks are oppressed while whites (quawhites) are not, but who nevertheless regard regular racism and reverse racism as equally bad. The point of my comparison between Bobby Shafto and Twin Earth is to convince holders of that position that they can’t hold it consistently.

Let me now turn to the second group – those who deny the possibility of reverse racism, on the grounds that racism is essentially about systematic , institutional oppression, not merely individual attitudes. The usual criticism of this view is that it conflicts with ordinary usage. That criticism is, I think, a strong one, but not quite as strong as its proponents suppose.

Why is the appeal to ordinary usage strong? Because the standard use of the word “racism” in ordinary language does treat individual attitudes as sufficient (even if not necessary) for racism. People are of course free to give the word “racism” a special sense as a technical term referring exclusively to institutional racism; but if that is all they are doing, then they are not entitled to criticise others who use the term in the ordinary way. By analogy, the term “trope,” as used in my profession, means something radically different from its use(s) almost everywhere else (whether in rhetoric, in literary theory, or in ordinary language); but it would be silly for me to criticise those who don’t use it as analytic philosophers do.

Why is the appeal to ordinary usage not necessarily decisive? Because a term’s ordinary use can legitimately be rejected if there turn out to be something wrong with that use – as I’ve argued is the case with, for example, the term “capitalism.”

But is there anything wrong with the ordinary meaning of “racism”? It allows for the possibility of reverse racism, of course, but is there anything wrong with doing so? One might think so, if one thought that acknowledging reverse racism as a category committed one to regarding reverse racism as comparable to regular racism either in extent or in moral seriousness; but no such commitment exists. (That the existence of reverse racism does not entail its being comparable in moral seriousness to regular racism was the moral of my Bobby Shafto thought-experiment above.) Of course the sort of people who tend to bang on about reverse racism do typically regard it as comparable, both in extent and in moral seriousness, to regular racism; but we do not need to deny the existence of a category in order to deny that the category has the significance that those who are most invested in the category generally attribute to it.

Another reason one might have for rejecting the ordinary meaning of “racism” is simply the need for a term that conveys the systematic, institutional dimensions of the problem; if “racism” as commonly used doesn’t do that, maybe we should change it so that it will. But in fact we have terms that do the trick, such as “oppression,” “white privilege,” and (mutatis mutandis) “patriarchy.” Those terms are all asymmetric; “racism” doesn’t need to be (nor, e.g., does “sexism”).

In any case, insisting that nothing counts as racism unless it involves systematic, institutional oppression has some consequences that even those who take that view ought to find awkward. This brings me to my second thought-experiment.

Thought-Experiment #2: Unfrozen Caveman Owner

Take someone you think is an obvious racist; presumably Donald Sterling will do (he’s also a sexist, so this example can do double duty), though pick someone else if you like. Now suppose that while touring a cryogenics facility he falls into the vat and is instantly frozen. When he is revived, many years (decades? centuries? millennia?) have passed, and he wakes into a world in which true racial (as well as gender, etc.) equality have finally been achieved. But all of Sterling’s attitudes remain the same as they were in the early 21st century. Is Sterling no longer a racist (and ditto for sexist)?

If racism necessarily involves society-wide power relations, then Sterling in my example is not a racist once he wakes up, since the power relations in question are gone. But it seems bizarre to deny that future-Sterling, with all his attitudes unchanged from those of present-Sterling, is a racist. I don’t just mean that it seems bizarre to me. Rather, I’m predicting (subject of course to falsification) that even those (or most of those) who are attracted to the denial of the possibility of reverse-racism will find it plausible to think of future-Sterling as a racist. But if he is a racist, then racism does not essentially depend on systematic oppression (even if much of racism’s moral interest stems from such oppression), and so the chief case against the possibility of reverse racism must be abandoned.

But perhaps it will be said that future-Sterling counts as a racist only because his beliefs and attitudes were formed in a social context of white privilege and so are still defined by their origin. Well in that case let’s consider a final thought-experiment.

Thought-Experiment #3: The Red and Yellow Peril

Two distinct ethnic groups, the Winkies and the Quadlings, live in adjacent territories. Each side regards the other as racially inferior degenerates who deserve to be either subjugated or exterminated. The two are at constant war with each other, but as they are roughly equally matched, neither side has succeeded in subduing the other. Are the Winkies and Quadlings not racist?

The mutual race hatred between the Winkies and the Quadlings seems like the kind of situation that the concept of “racism” is tailor-made to describe. But while each side seeks domination, neither has it. There’s no inequality, no privilege, no oppression. So racism, I suggest, need not involve these. In which case reverse racism is possible. Though not necessarily that big a deal.

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  • Sean II

    Here’s another thought experiment:

    It’s 2002 and there are three people who, inexcusably, hate Firefly. One of the people is a television viewer who expresses his hatred simply by refusing to watch the show. The second is a Fox executive from the news division, who can vaguely be said to have “power” over network policy, but who is not in any position to take action for or against this particular program. The third is Gail Berman, who cancels the program.

    It’s intuitive enough to say that Berman is worse than the first guy, because she combines a false belief with a harmful act. She doesn’t just refuse to watch the show, she ensures that no one else will get to watch it either. So uncool.

    But it’s not intuitive at all to say that the second guy is worse than the first, just because he has “power”. For he doesn’t really have the power to change what happens here, and in any case he didn’t do anything. In fact, in the absence of any specific act, it reeks of collective guilt to judge him more harshly because he happens to belong a group that includes Gail Berman. That’s just a prejudice of another kind.

    So it seems very much like the second person belongs in the same category as the first. In other words, the real problem is acting on a bad belief, not belonging to some category which combines bad beliefs with special parking privileges, or whatever.

    • Christopher Ritchie

      The Problem with this particular analogy is that ‘Firefly’ is a specific instance of a class, not a class in of itself(class here meant somewhat in the general sense). A more comparable example would be to change that to ‘Science Fiction Shows’. Doing so demonstrates the problem with your anology, in that Executives with the power to influence what’s on TV may not have the power to get ride of an individual TV show, but they certainly have the power to influence what’s on TV. That is your second category in regards to racism doesn’t actually exist. It’s simply not possible for some-one in a position of power within out society to have zero capacity to impact those of a disadvantages class unless he has zero exposure to said class. Even than, his power can help reinforce those attitudes through institutional structures.

      I would say what the discussion on Racism and ‘Reverse-Racism’ often ignores is the ways in which these terms themselves are used by different sources and institutional powers. ‘Reverse-Racism’ even as a concept is rarely deployed by those who would theoretically experience it(The Good example below of the single white student in an all black school who might experience discrimination on that basis). Instead it’s typically used by those who have institutional power, or their proxies, to argue against specific attempts to redress said power imbalance. That “People who bring up race are the Real Racists!” is a common talking point in US political discource should sort of demonstrate that point.

      Lastly I think a point can be made that attempts to abstract this away into universalities are dangerous. It might be true that absent any history a story about white people hanging a black man accused of rape is the same as a story about black people hanging a white man accused of rape, but in the real world we don’t get to be ‘absent of any history’.

      • Sean II

        “It’s simply not possible for some-one in a position of power within out society to have zero capacity to impact those of a disadvantages class unless he has zero exposure to said class.”

        Strange idea. Since WWII a majority of whites have carefully taken steps (sometimes extreme steps, like commuting for two hours every day) in order to have “zero exposure to said” blacks.

        Many (though not me) would denounce that is racist. Do you believe otherwise? Do you say “Whites in Portland can’t be racist because they have basically zero exposure to blacks?”

        Among other weird things, that would mean that successful racial separatists aren’t racists.

        • martinbrock

          Separatists need not harm the people from whom they separate, so if “racism” describes harmful interaction with persons of a disadvantaged race, I would say that racial separatists need not be racists and that successful separatists are not.

          • Sean II

            “Separatists need not harm the people from whom they separate…”

            Not true in the most important case at hand. If whites separated from blacks, the results would look like what happens when you pull the plug on an Evita 4.

          • martinbrock

            If whites separated from blacks in central North America, I suppose blacks might police other blacks more effectively than whites police blacks now. I’m not advocating racial segregation for this reason or any other reason, but I doubt that black culture would descend into chaos without the white man bearing his burden for them.

          • Sean II

            The idea that black people stop fearing and resenting the police when the police are black is intuitive, but totally false. Tension between black communities and law enforcement is a not at all surprising side effect of the fact that young black males are <3% of the population who commit ~50% of the most serious crimes. Blows the 80/20 rule all to hell. Any competent security provider is going to find a shortcut like that impossible to ignore.

            Frankly, you could hire the Fruit of Islam to police a place like Ferguson and, after a brief honeymoon period, you'd be right back to dangerous levels of resentment.

            As to your other point…well, the flow of tax dollars strongly disagrees.

          • martinbrock

            Whites separating from blacks affects more than the race of policemen. Blacks then don’t have the tax dollars supporting the disintegration of black families either, and some new social organization emerges. The new organization might look at first like gangs of young, black men warring to rule and rob the communities, but every police force is a gang of young men warring to rule and rob a community. At least, the cops on the beat are young men. I don’t pretend to know what sort new social organization would emerge, but the new police would be enforcing different rules, not the same rules breeding resentment now.

        • Christopher Ritchie

          You would note that ‘exposure’ need not mean ‘living together’. But if you prefer, delete the ‘unless’, it makes the argument stronger perhaps. It’s also obvious that in North America it is virtually impossible for you to escape ‘exposure’ to black people, despite the efforts of segregationists.

          • Sean II

            So you’ve taken refuge into a very literal definition of exposure, to which I say: “(yawn).”

            The fact is that tens of millions of white people have, by living in suburbs or rural areas, managed to achieve effective segregation from blacks. They have no contact with them expect what little they want, and even then strictly on their own terms.

            The little old widows I had to visit on Thanksgiving, for example, have all seen a black person this calendar year. Holy shit, let’s give them each a Profiles in Courage award. But the black person they saw was probably a phlebotomist who came in to draw their coumadin-soaked blood for $10.77 an hour. Carefully screened, you savvy?

            In the grand scheme of things, this rounds down to zero exposure.

      • TracyW

        ‘Reverse-Racism’ even as a concept is rarely deployed by those who would theoretically experience it(The Good example below of the single white student in an all black school who might experience discrimination on that basis). Instead it’s typically used by those who have institutional power, or their proxies, to argue against specific attempts to redress said power imbalance.

        If the specific attempts aim to redress said power imbalances, surely therefore said specific attempts would indeed affect those who have institutional power and thus these people would indeed theoretically experience it?

        I haven’t noticed anyone going around arguing “we should attempt to address power imbalances but only if it doesn’t actually affect anyone who already has power.”

        • Sean II

          “I haven’t noticed anyone going around arguing ‘we should attempt to address power imbalances but only if it doesn’t actually affect anyone who already has power.'”

          Indeed! The usual approach with steps designed to, ahem, “redress power imbalances” is to pick out some unfortunate individual from the powerful group and make an example of him, in a way that stands no chance of changing things generally.

          You see a lot of cases where it sure looks like the redressers said “Okay, look, we can’t really get our hands around the white power conspiracy, but we can sure as hell make this one poor sap suffer for the sin of saying the wrong words about race. Let’s get him!”

          In other words, all the racial redressers seem to do since their policy dreams died in the 1970s, is to pick out individuals members of the privileged group and hurt them, every so often. Of actual redressing, there is none.

        • Christopher Ritchie

          Do have you specific examples in mind? I suspect, largely, that those examples will collapse on further examination. Even the most egrecious attempts to ‘redress power’ in American society in the past several decades have taken pains to do exactly what you outline there, and are often undermined precisely on the terms that they failed to do so. Integrating Busing being perhaps the classic example. It’s hard to see how the arguments typically used against such busing can stem into ‘reverse’ racism territory.

          Though fascinatingly enough, Sean II has not actually addressed my central point, that being that the second category he outlines above doesn’t really exist. His argument seems to ultimately be; Well because subject A has power, but isn’t racist against particular subject B because A and B don’t have a specific relationship, he cannot be generally racist under the systematic definition. Mostly I’m just objecting to what is a sloppy analogy…

          • TracyW

            Christopher:

            Do have you specific examples in mind?

            You’re the one who introduced the idea of specific proposals to redress power imbalances. I presume you had some idea of what proposals you meant by that.

          • Sean II

            “Though fascinatingly enough, Sean II has not actually addressed my central point…”

            Not enough there to address. It is quite obvious that large numbers of whites have no power to change the social condition of blacks, and certainly do nothing to harm actual black people. To call such whites racist (in the prejudice + power sense) is to partake of the concept of collective guilt.

            These people are indeed analogous to my news division executive who, though allegedly part of a powerful establishment, did nothing to cause the cancellation of Firefly and could have done nothing to save it.

            I’m afraid the analogy stands. You haven’t said anything that knocks it down. And though it’s clear enough that you’d like to knock it down, this I regret is not the same thing.

        • BrittlePie

          “‘Reverse-Racism’ even as a concept is rarely deployed by those who would theoretically experience it”

          “If the specific attempts aim to redress said power imbalances, surely therefore said specific attempts would indeed affect those who have institutional power and thus these people would indeed theoretically experience it?”

          Yes, these people would theoretically experience the effect of (1) attempts to redress power imbalances, but not the effect of (2) reverse-racism. Nevertheless, they often justify trying to prevent (1) by pretending as though they are instead trying to prevent (2). They do this because its immoral to try to prevent attempts to redress power imbalances, but it’s not immoral to try to prevent attempts at reverse-racism. So the fact that attempts to redress power imbalances “affect those with power who therefore theoretically experience it” is exactly the point. The fact that it “affects” them is why they want to stop it, but would rather not admit to it.

          So I’m not sure what you’re counter-argument is, unless you’re suggesting that two are the same? That’s probably not your point but I’ll point out how they’re different just in case. For one, an attempt to “redress power imbalances” is an attempt to bring the privileged group to an equal level, whereas committing reverse-racism towards a privilege person is an attempt to treat them as subhuman in order to make them feel -in that instance- below your level. Second, attempts to redress power imbalances are not done with the intention of causing harm, even if they inadvertently do so, whereas causing harm is the entire points of reverse-racism. Third, unlike reverse-racism, losing privilege is not necessarily a strictly bad experience. For example, strict gender roles subjugated women, but they also harmed men who couldn’t fit the masculine role that would otherwise privilege them (effeminate men, gay men, etc), made it embarrassing for them to seek help for sexual violence, etc. The power that privileged groups have can be a doubled edged sword.

          • TracyW

            So in other words: some changes are good and some are bad and we need to argue through the details of a proposed change and work out which arguments generally apply.
            (Also: people tend to make arguments that will make their position look stronger, not the ones that will make their position look weaker! Film at eleven!).

      • mr biggs

        This last, risible, paragraph implies that we participate in some tribal, group way with the moral culpabilities of others’ crimes. I despise this disordered, ubiquitous idea. It’s not less awful or wrong to hang the innocent because of the victim’s perceived connection to ‘co-racialists’—or tribe members, or whatever—who have committed (historically) more hangings against people from the hangers’ group. The French peasants who tortured aristocrats were every bit as wrong as the cruel nobility they loathed. This sensibility makes my skin crawl…..

      • SouthOhioGipper

        We certainly can be as individuals! I as an individual simply proclaim “to hell with history”. I’m not taking previous history from 75 yrs ago! I SIMPLY DON’T CARE ABOUT IT.

  • Michael Philip

    or maybe its both. perhaps racism is personal and institutional

  • http://stephenmeansme.blogspot.com/ StephenMeansMe

    There’s a proper distinction here. Irrational prejudice is factually wrong, and so it should be met with criticism. Irrational discrimination is a different beast, and actually affects other people: but it’s highly dependent on scope, as this post points out…

    … only, there’s waaaaay more granularity of scope than just “one person” or “the whole world,” obviously. And we also know that, on the margin, people can’t instantly transfer between options.

    So maybe on the whole, most people in the world are bigoted against odd-freckle-faces, but there might be (probably, in fact) enclaves of odd-freckle-faced people with a minority subpopulation of even-freckle-faced people. In that limited scope, would enclave-wide discrimination of EVEN-freckle-faced people be a higher order offense, an abuse of power even though in the larger scope the direction of maltreatment is reversed?

    I think it would.

    • Sean II

      “Irrational discrimination is a different beast, and actually affects other people.”

      Note also: if the discrimination really is irrational, it negatively affects the discriminator.

      But doesn’t, if it’s not.

      • http://stephenmeansme.blogspot.com/ StephenMeansMe

        It depends on how we define these words.

        One can “rationally” discriminate based on flawed beliefs. For example, if someone thought that even-freckle-faced people were moral abominations not to be treated as human, it’s proximately rational for that person to treat even-freckle-faced people as sub-human but not ultimately rational.

        And it all comes down to scope. An odd-freckle bigot in a majority even-freckle town would be irrational to discriminate, because of the social backlash (at least). But an even-freckle bigot in the same town might freely discriminate against the odd-freckle minority, if the bigotry was commonplace among his or her even-freckle brethren.

  • TracyW

    I think the problem with your position is that society is more complex than oppressed/non-oppressed.

    Take South Africa: since the end of apartheid, blacks have basically all the political power. But whites still have most of the money. How does oppressed/non-oppressed map onto that situation?

    What’s more society often operates at a lower level than an entire country. Say you’re a white kid growing up in a majority-black neighbourhood, and you happen to be the only white kid attending your school. Reverse racism there can have the effect of systematically constraining your options.

    Why would Shafto’s envince a worse motive and character if it’s generally shared than if it’s unique to him? Wouldn’t it be the other way around? We are all deeply influenced by our cultural backgrounds, and there are evolutionary reasons for us to not individually rigorously test everything we learn (eg if your Dad says “don’t eat things that look like this fungi otherwise you’ll die in agnoising pain”, or if your mum says “Don’t bet more than you can afford to lose, your uncle committed suicide after losing all his life savings in a bet.”). That someone didn’t deeply question their cultural teachings before sharing a view is quite a different thing to someone deliberately deciding to adopt a new view, in this case, discriminating against people with freckles.

    I think racism and reverse racism can be regarded as equally bad because they both involve discrimating against someone based on an irrelevant characteristic the person did not in any way choose. Racism does not suddenly become any better if you change who is on top.

    • martinbrock

      Here’s another example. In the United States, black defenders of slavery and Jim Crow laws were incredibly rare anomalies, but female, fundamentalist Christians are more numerous than male, fundamentalist Christians, and many women doubted that increasing gender equality in the 20th century was a net plus for women, and these women were instrumental in defeating the Equal Rights Amendment in the seventies.

      Furthermore, many nominal opponents of “sexism” today believe that defeating sexism requires a law requiring employers to pay receptionists and truck drivers similarly as long as a more women choose to be receptionists while more men choose to be truck drivers, while opponents of this law maintain that it is codifies and enforces sexism more than the reverse.

    • Sean II

      “Racism does not suddenly become any better if you change who is on top…”

      …and good to remember: who’s on top changes with locality, context, time, subjective preference, etc. Asians do very well in our economy, so I guess they’re supposed to be part of the power structure. “Light privilege”, I’ve heard this called. But the other night in Missouri that suddenly didn’t matter very much. White guys seem pretty powerful on a typical Tuesday morning, but ever see one in court during an EEOC suit? They don’t look so hot. And as Norman Podhoretz pointed out so many years ago, find a 13 year old boy who thinks the world revolves around sports, music, fighting, and having the courage to approach girls, then just trying telling him blacks are disadvantaged.

      So the “only lights can be racist” faction has a tough position to defend. They have to say “racism is about power” but only this specific type of power, and not that kind, and even then only when I say so, and never when I don’t.

    • stevenjohnson2

      Questions about social policy are not resolved by moralizing about individuals. Racism is not the wrong thinking of a number of white people and reverse racism the wrong thinking of a number of black people. But this nonsensical idea of “reverse racism” is held up as a moral objection to struggles against racism. Racism is a social policy, albeit a Hayekian one that emerged without a central planner. Reverse racism is not. That’s why the first is worst, divagations about the moral purity of individuals notwithstanding.

      • TracyW

        I agree with you on some of this. Arguing about blame is generally pointless outside of the court system. Racism is indeed more complicated than whites/blacks (for example apartheid-era South Africa at one point would not admit Maori members of the All Blacks and at another point was willing to treat the Maori members as honourary whites.)

        However the USA and South Africa both had very deliberately racist laws favouring whites and oppressing blacks. And I don’t see how being a deliberate social policy makes anything better.

        • Sean II

          “…and at another point was willing to treat the Maori members as honourary whites.”

          How Bizarre

          • TracyW

            It involved rugby. ‘Nuff said.

          • adrianratnapala

            In SA, the proposition “Mr X prefers rugby to soccer” probably correlates extremely well to the proposition “Mr X is white”. By that definition, Maoris are white. And so am I.

          • Sean II

            And yet liking OMC did not suffice to make me Maori. Odd how that works.

            It’s worth noting that in the states “Mr. X prefers rugby” not only correlates to “Mr. X is white”, it pretty much gets you all the way to “Mr. X is white enough to have attended prep school followed by private university, while bearing a not obviously masculine name like Terry, Tracy, Shannon, Gail, etc”.

  • stevenjohnson2

    In thought experiment three, I believe every casualty of the constant wars would qualify as the racist oppression. Perhaps if the Winkies and the Quadlings were separated by a Green Zone so there was never any interaction to be oppressive?

    Racism can be analogized to the operation of a steam engine. The institutional arrangements are the boiler and the pistons and the process of fueling the flames. Personal attitudes are the water, which is heated, then harnessed to carry out the thermodynamic work of the engine. The confusions about reverse racism and such I think on one level derive from the tacit assumption that racism is personalities somehow projected as social processes. On another level, I’m pretty sure that a double standard for personal indignation on behalf of persons is involved: A white person feeling disliked by a handful of black persons is worse than a black person feeling disliked by the white majority.

    Possibly on yet another level, the notions of reverse racism have to do with fairly simple projections of changes in population ratios?

    • John Say

      If you have to precondition a hypothetical and inumerable impossibilities, it has little value.

      Lets say we have a green zone separating the groups – still some wasted effort must be expended in preserving the separation – so the “racism” still has cost.

      To make #3 work you need the two groups to be on separate planets or continents not only unable to interact but oblivious of each others existance.

      In that instance I will agree that a prejudice against mythical beings that has no cost is meaningless.

      But that relates back to Mr. Long’s conflation of thought, words and deeds.

      Is racism thought ? If so how do we measure the thoughts of others ?
      Is racism words ? If so who is more evil ? The person who maligns those of one race while actively engaged in helping them ? Or the person who never engages in offensive speech and never acts in relations to those they purportedly are not prejudiced against ?

      For the most part we measure people by their acts, we can not see their souls.

  • Les Kyle Nearhood

    My big problem is that you rightly discover that reverse racism, or racial hatred exists but pooh pooh it as “not necessarily a big deal”. But it is a big deal, a very big deal. If one group does not have the power structure of the other that does not mean that their prejudices cannot be harmful.
    Anger, cynicism, rioting, attacks on individuals, a general irresponsibility and contempt for normal social relations, these things are harmful and not least to the minority community itself.

  • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

    This is quite an odd and, to my mind, perverse post. Libertarianism is all about the individual, as moral agent and possessor of rights. Anything that unjustly harms a person is morally wrong, full stop. An applicant who is denied admission to the college of his/her choice because of admission preferences based on skin color is harmed, as is a faculty applicant under similar circumstances, an applicant for a government contract who is denied because of minority set-asides, etc. It is one thing to say that blacks are more frequently the victims of racism than any other group, quite another to say that racism is “less seriously problematic” when directed at certain people, as opposed to others. If whites are less often the victim of murder than other groups, it doesn’t make murder any less objectionable.

    • stevenjohnson2

      What is morally perverse is the pretense that the past is irrelevant to questions of justice. Formally equal rights are not the guarantors of equality of opportunity. Indeed, they seem to be valued largely as guarantors of inequality of outcome precisely because they ignore inequalities of opportunity due to the effects of past racism.

      • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

        Presumably, your comment was meant as a reply to mine, but I can’t see that you disagree with anything I actually say. But I’m sure you enjoyed saying it anyway.

      • TracyW

        There have been places where, post the revolution, children’s future opportunities were determined based on redressing their fathers’ economic opportunities: eg the Chinese Cultural Revolution, kulaks after the Russian Revolution. The results strike me as unjust, and vicious. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

    • John Say

      You have an overly broad definition of harm.

      If I an applicant is denied addmission to the college of their choice because of their lack of intelligence – did the colleges refusal to admit them harm them ?

      How can a harm be conditioned on race but not intelligence ?

      The logic problem is that you are not harmed when you are denied admission to college. You never had a right to college admission.

      You are harmed when something that is actually yours is taken from you, or when an actual right is limited. Not when someone else refuses to give you what is theirs to give or not.

      You are suffering from libertarain narcisism – the view that all harm is relative to your wants and needs.

      • Les Kyle Nearhood

        Can’t buy that line of reasoning. If admittance into a prestigious school gives one a hand up in life, and if a person meets all qualifications but is denied entrance due to an immutable physical trait such as skin color or eye shape, then that is a real harm. The harm is not lessened because they may be part of a majority.

        • TracyW

          But assuming limited resources, there must be a cut-off somewhere. If a university can’t decide between two applicants so tosses a coin, was the person who lost the coin toss harmed?
          And arguably the university has an interest in admitting a diverse range of applicants (I mean diverse in a broader sense than skin colour), so it is not necessarily wrong if the university uses a range of admin procedures. The problem with explicit rules is that people learn to game them and the university winds up with a student body of very good rule followers.
          That said, ethnic politics have a long history of turning lethal, and I think the account that should be taken of them depends on the details of the situation. To take the Northern Ireland example: I can utterly see why aiming for a deliberate balance in the police is desirable.

          • Sean II

            “…and the university winds up with a student body of very good rule followers.”

            “And what’s wrong with that?”, asked a professoriat made up of people who are good at following the rules of academic publishing, tenure, university politics, etc.

        • John Say

          No there is not real harm.
          You presume that there is a right to a prestigeous education or anything else.

          There are no positive rights – there can not be. There is nothing to provide them.

          Lets start with “meets all the qualifications” well what if you don’t ? Why don’t those who do not meet the qualifications also have a right to a prestigious education ?

          Why don’t people have the right to be equally intelligent ? creative ? Why can prestigious institutiuions deny people admittance because they are less intelligent or less creative ?

          Isn’t that more discriminatory than denying them admission because of some other arbitrary attribute ?

          Lets go further – you are that prestigious institution.
          For every position you have available, there are 3000 applicants.

          How do you narrow those 3000 down to 1 ?
          After you have weighted all the SAT scores and every objective measure that you can conceive of you still will have a couple of dozen candidates that are indistinguishably well qualified. And this ignores the fact that even in winnowing down that original 3000, you know while you are doing ti that the criteria you are using are merely suggestive – not determinative. That sometimes the person with the lower SAT score of lower GPA or who whose high school sucked might still be the one who will do the best. But there is no perfect metric for determining these things.

          In may instances there are far more people “meeting the qualifications” than there are positions. That is the point of a “prestigious institution”

          Inevitably an enormous number of fully qualified applicants are going to be “denied entrance”.

          Nor is this problem unique to prestigious colleges.
          Every instance where we must pick a few from many – whether it is applicants for a professional job, or a position at burger king – same problem.

          Life is about discrimination. Some of it with a a rational basis, but often the distinctions have to be made absent some formal calculus.

          Lets say you are a land lord and you have two aplicants and only one apartment, available.

          One has a 3 year old conviction for assault. The other has been evicted twice and has a couple of thousand dollars in outstanding judgements.

          These types of decisions are life. Whether you are a college admissions officer, The manager at Burger King or a landlord you have to make decisions about people.
          Sometimes you are picking between the cream of the crop, sometimes the dregs. But always making choices where there is no perfect calculus to tell you with precision what the right choice is.

          What we do is discriminate. The act of picking the 1300 SAT over the 1275 is discrimination.

          Picking the white 1300 over the black one is discrimination – just as picking the black one over the white.
          Whatever choice you make once you are past the easy
          means to cull applicants is some form of discrimination.

          • Les Kyle Nearhood

            Which is why It ought to be color blind. really you went to great lengths to say something that is irrelevant.

          • John Say

            What I went to great lengths to say is
            No it should be whatever the college chooses it to be.

            We can not create equality – even trying does more harm than good.

            Saying admissions should be color blind is like saying they should be blind to intelligence.

            It is ONLY government that must treat us with blind and prefect equality.
            One of the reasons that government should be limited – and should not be subsidizing education.

            Otherwise we end up with this type of idiotic debate.

      • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

        I’m afraid you are confused. My comment was a response to Prof. Long’s post (see my first sentence). Long concedes that reverse discrimination is wrong, he just thinks it’s no big deal. I disagree. Thus, I don’t really need to explain to you why a public university, financed with tax dollars from all groups, is acting wrongly when it discriminates on the basis of race, but not when it does so on the basis of intelligence.

        • John Say

          Actually yes you do.

          The fact is that making choices between either indistinguishable or incomparable people is an inherent part of life.
          Past that, Sorry, I do not accept that merely by offering something “publicly” you cede rights you had if you acted slightly less publicly. Government is there to secure rights not limit them.

          Yes, those who provide funds should be able to dictate the terms of their use.

          Which is one of many reasons government should not subsidize anything.

          Regardless, as one of the sources of those funds, I ob
          ject to government attaching constraints on their use – beyond whatever my personal constraints should be.

          The point being that the public funds argument merely changes where the discriminatory choice takes place.

          There is no perfect calculus of deciding between humans.

    • Sergio Méndez

      This is from the same person who justified collective punishement of countries (and their citizens) the US bombed, because they allowed to be ruled by undemocratic governments…go figure.

      • MARK_D_FRIEDMAN

        My good man, you need a rabies shot.

  • jtkennedy

    Not following Long here: “When I say that prejudice against odd-freckled people is a worse evil on Twin Earth than in our world, I don’t just mean that it has worse consequences (though that’ part of what I mean). I also mean that it evinces a worse motive and character – since it involves knowingly contributing to ongoing oppression, as Shafto’s does not.”

    it seems to me that bigots typically consider their bigotry justified, and thus they do not *knowingly* contribute to unjustified oppression.

    • BrittlePie

      If being prejudiced means believing group X is inferior (for example, that they are by their nature prone to violence), then I’m not sure what would stop a prejudiced person from knowingly advocating that laws, law enforcement, government officials, and communities systematically treat group X differently to account for their inferiority (through, for example, harsher and separate laws to “protect the common good”). People can rationalize anything, unfortunately. The same would apply if a prejudiced person was born into an oppressive system and continued to defend it. Of course, they may refuse to use the word “oppression” to describe what they knowingly help create and maintain. But they would admit to trying to institutionalize the harsher treatment of group X under the guise of public safety (because they are too violent to be treated gently, or whatever), and that is oppression, whether or not they like to word. Similarly they would also refuse to use the term “bigotry” to describe their beliefs about the inferiority of others (they’ll simply it’s the “truth”). But they would admit to believing group X is inferior, which is bigotry whether or not they would describe it as such.

      I understand that someone would never say “I am a bigot” or “I am wishing to create oppression” since both terms are insults and necessarily imply injustice. But can’t *we* still say that of them, since it is the tone of the word and not its definition that they object to? Otherwise, this statement would also be contradictory:

      “It seems to me that bigots typically consider their bigotry justified”

      since they can not conceive of their bigotry as “bigotry” if they also think it is justified/truthful. No one would say “I am justified in my bigotry”. And so in conclusion, my head hurts.

      • jtkennedy

        Favoring the jailing serial killers could objectively be construed as knowingly contributing to harsh treatment, but most would consider such treatment justified.

        “But as a matter of fact what they are knowingly contributing to is an unjustified system..”

        In he same sense that most voters do, yet bigots have a much worse reputation than voters.

        • BrittlePie

          “Favoring the jailing serial killers could objectively be construed as knowingly contributing to harsh treatment, but most would consider such treatment justified.”

          That can’t be oppression though, since it’s justified. The bigot thinks that his bigotry is justified, but if it could be justified it wouldn’t be bigotry, so it can’t be. Eh, I’m just confusing myself now.

    • Sean II

      You’ve definitely got a point there. Long cheats more than a bit with the freckles thing, by picking a trait that is so clearly arbitrary.

      Somewhere along the way one needs to grapple with a case where the statistical discrimination involved is at least arguably valid.

      May I suggest a basketball coach who refuses to accept resumes from pygmies?

      He’s definitely applying a prejudice, but as you say, he isn’t knowingly contributing to unjustified oppression.

      • John Say

        The issue is NOT Justice – atleast not in the infinitely broad sense it is used here.

        It is FORCE.

        This entire rant from the original post throught the comments confuses what is and is not a right, what is and is not force, and what is and is not power.

        The child with the larger bag of m&m’s is not a powerful oppressor – unless he starts pelting the other with them.

        The world is not and never will be equal, nor is it even a desireable goal. We have only limited equality – equal natural rights, and equality protection of government.

        All else we must provide ourselves.

      • jtkennedy

        As I look up the word “oppression” I see that it entails injustice, so I would rephrase it as: Bigots do not *knowingly* contribute to oppression. They consider their judgment justified. As most people do.

  • http://www.propertarianism.com Curt Doolittle

    OR PERHAPS IT”S TRIVIALLY SIMPLE AND SUCH DISCUSSION IS DISHONEST

    1) The distribution of physical desirability for mating, the demonstrated behaviors of impulsivity and time preference, aggression, and demonstrated intelligence vary between individuals. (true)
    2) The social classes are organized by these distributions due to reproductive desirability, status utility, and cooperative (economic) utility. (true)
    3) The races demonstrate different relative distributions of these classes. (true)
    4) Racial groups demonstrate kin selection in mating, neighborhoods, friendship, social organizations, and business organizations. (true).
    5) Racial groups demonstrate kin selection in voting (true).
    6) INABILITY to use the state for rents and privileges limits political competition and conflict, whereas ABILITY to use the state for rents and privileges increases political competition and conflict.
    7) Economic Wealth reduces dependence upon kin for mutual insurance under kin selection. (true). Economic stress increases dependence upon kin for mutual insurance via kin selection. (true)
    8) The difference between economic, political, social, reproductive and status success of one race or another is due to the distribution of superior talents versus inferior liabilities of the members of those races – plus normative factors, the most important of which is in-group trust, and the second is the degree of the suppression of free riding. (true)
    9) As such the only reason for racism is the rates of reproduction between the classes. And the only possible means of achieving equality in any and all cases is to suppress the reproduction of the lower classes of the races whose distribution is bottom weighted.
    10) If china can do this so can the rest of the world.

    Equality is achievable and desirable in just four generations. But it is upward reproductive redistribution that must mach downward economic redistribution for equality to be possible.

    Otherwise, it is non-rational for people with higher reproductive desirability, lower impulsivity, lower aggression, and higher intelligence to tolerate political competition from those who are less desirable and in the net, parasitic, just as it is politically preferable to compete via parasitism if one is less desirable at the bottom.

    Human beings are not unique and precious snowflakes. It is only that disregard for life is a moral hazard. The fact that mothers MUST believe their dysgenic offspring are precious is an evolutionary convenience, not a demonstrable fact.

    The purpose of science is quite often to force us to acknowledge uncomfortable truths. Equality is not a problem of belief (lying), but one of fact (truth).

    Try not to lie.

    It hurts the discipline of philosophy.

    • King Snail

      1) “Demonstrated” intelligence, time pref, impulsivity, has limited use in determining potential. Actions happen under certain conditions and circumstances. The suicide rate for Jews skyrocketed during the Holocaust. Can one extract racial characteristics from this?

      2) Classes? What do you mean? Marxist? Or some variant of libertarian class-analysis juxtaposing political in- v. out- groups. This needs clarity.

      3) Races? What do you mean? This is a highly controversial taxonomic designation. Especially when a slew of anthro- bio- genetic- researchers are quite adamant that there is less difference between traditional race groupings yet more internal to group diversity. The lines are blurry and similarity/difference is more associated with local geography, migration distances (making variations appear gradually), as well as mixing via conquer, trade and slavery. The old racial picture– starting from relative disparate purity– has been inverted. So, like class, race needs definition and proof.

      4) So not only does race need to be defined and proved in order to give any meaning to your propositions, so does kin. Is it biological or cultural? (Or is culture an expression of biology for the most part? So ‘kin’ is merely the people within these and other discreet racial descriptors…) How do you know? Further, there is that word again: demonstrate. How much work can behavior do to prove anything about biology– especially in terms of race (no lab needed?) I say this because I sense a bait and switch coming up.

      5) Intelligence. You guessed it. As with class, race, and kin, this needs definition and proof. If you are into Arthur Jensen, Raymond Cattell et. al., then say so. But there at least tow other major schools on intelligence besides the hereditarian. So your proposition is empty concerning IQ and state power if your understanding of intelligence is false. Though those with state power will certainly have a particular edge in the use of force– no matter who it is or what goals they possess. So I give you half a point here.

      6) Voting and kin selection. Well, still need to explain kin. Is it blood or choice? Otherwise, ahhh…. yawn.

      9) Here is the ole bait and switch. Now, instead of using “demonstrated” you have moved on to ‘superior talents v. inferior liabilities among races’. Talent is a word for innate ability on balance. You have equated that which can be seen with the unseen. But where is the work defending such grand assumptions? You may have built an interesting syllogistic structure– but it’s the specifics populating the logic that remain nebulous notions: race, class, talents, kin, intelligence….

      11) Maybe people are ignorant and paranoid– it is common knowledge that other groups tend to look all the same and only difference is detectable among same group members. Does it have to be this way? Prove it. What if people were to get out more often, so to speak?

      Radical Eugenics. Well, who is going to determine who may have off-spring? And what kind of powers of enforcement are they to have? It is because of this last gesture and your fear of ‘dysgenic’ calamity that I am awarding you the Wickliffe Draper Pioneer Fund Comment of the Week designation.

      Thanks for your honesty, Curt. (Oh, except for the little bait and switch re “demonstrated” abilities to inherent ‘talents’.) There are many libertarians that feel as you do but obfuscate their ideas. Yet you have far far far to go if you want to claim the mantle of science for your racialism. You left virtually every key factor to prove– especially class, race, and intelligence. Otherwise, it looks like apriori assumptions on which to hang your confirmation biases. May that strike you as an uncomfortable truth.

      • Sean II

        So I have this odd fascination with the psychology of the doomed. I wonder…what was it like to be part of Napolean’s entourage after Berezina? What did they say to each other, to keep the obvious fact of total defeat at bay? Or how did it feel to be an anti-vaccine activist in January 2010, when the Wakefield MMR fraud was finally exploded? What did all those people do, to stop the reality of their complete wrongness from dropping like a roof onto their heads?

        Basically I want to understand the mental state of someone who stays in the bunker, even after the war is clearly lost. Why do they do that? Why do they become so attached to a belief they’d rather make nonsense of the world than live without it?

        It’s 2014, and you’re still saying race does not exist. You’re still flashing Lewontin’s fallacy around like a brand new toy. You’re still saying intelligence isn’t a thing, or can’t be measured, or doesn’t predict anything, or whatever.

        When you eventually come around, will you please tell me what it was that kept you going in these, the final hours of your fever?

        • King Snail

          As usual, par Sean II, it’s all flare but no substance. You have said absolutely nothing– and yet, are probably still patting yourself on the back. And this piece of ridiculous inaccuracy: “You’re still saying intelligence isn’t a thing, or can’t be measured, or doesn’t predict anything, or whatever” makes you look silly. Straw manning much? And no matter what I think, or what might be ‘right’, Doolittle here has to define and backup his view of intelligence. At least Doolittle has probably read something on the subject matter. So, go away, asshole.

          • Sean II

            Surely that was the calm response of a confident man who has nothing to fear from the facts!

            But hey, fair is fair: congratulations if you have fallen back to saying that intelligence, though real, may not be all that heritable. Still wrong, but much less obviously so. That’s sort of the Hindenburg Line for your team. It’s a losing position in the end, but better than being caught out in the open.

            You definitely did say race doesn’t exist though, and you did wantonly Lewontin it up. I notice your reply pretends no answer to those points.

          • King Snail

            Wow, now you attribute words to me that you wish I said. The problem is that you are attempting all-or-nothing statements as attributions. But any review of my conversations with other people show otherwise–especially about race. Which you have been privy to. In other words, you are a liar. Unfortunate– because there was hope for you at some point. But lack of character catches up to you.

            Why don’t you go back trolling people of your ilk– like Charlie Lima Kilo. You guys deserve each other. It’s a good thing when the sharks get so frenzied that they eat each other.

            Sean, I will level with you. You act like a dunk tank fool. You will probably pay consequences eventually, chum. (Haha, I said sharks, then tank, then chum just a bit later woo hoo. I got flare too. But, I have no desire to lie about other people’s positions.)

          • Sean II

            The good news is you probably don’t think my condition is heritable.

            That’s one thing to be thankful for.

          • King Snail

            Lack of confidence in ideas, in the validity of one’s knowledge and positions, is a sign of commitment to learning. I hope I evoke such a value.

        • Sergio Méndez

          “You’re still saying intelligence isn’t a thing, or can’t be measured, or doesn’t predict anything, or whatever.”

          Let me see what King Sail said:

          “Intelligence. You guessed it. As with class, race, and kin, this needs
          definition and proof. If you are into Arthur Jensen, Raymond Cattell et.
          al., then say so. But there at least tow other major schools on
          intelligence besides the hereditarian. So your proposition is empty
          concerning IQ and state power if your understanding of intelligence is
          false. Though those with state power will certainly have a particular
          edge in the use of force– no matter who it is or what goals they
          possess. So I give you half a point here.”

          So he said:

          1) That there is more than one school on defining and measuring inteligence than the heridatirian one (and thuse the claim “The norms demonstrated by racial groups reflect behavior at the mean (true).” needs proof).

          2) He said Curt Doolitle claim thus regarding IQ was false.

          Where did he said “intelligence isn´t a thing” or “cannot be measured”?

          No wonder you don´t get it…you don´t even bother to understand what the other person is arguing to start…

          • Sean II

            Make you a square deal, Serg’. If you can get King Snail to come back here and agree to these two statements…

            1) Intelligence is an important human trait, accurately measured by tests, which robustly predicts a long list of life outcomes, and is substantially heritable.

            2) Race, understood as continent of origin, is a valid and well-defined category for the study of human subgroups, interestingly used by doctors, geneticists, archeologists, criminologists, psychometricians, etc.

            …then I’ll say “I’m sorry King Snail, I got you wrong.”

            But if he won’t sign on to those (painfully true) statements, then he’s full of shit and to the extent that you defend him, so are you.

  • Buckland

    Love the Bobby Shafto(e) character. Obviously somebody has read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. And with the Twin Earth reference probably Ananthem also.

  • silverfawn

    On reverse racism: Reality, rather than thought experiment. Try walking around any inner city at night being white. See what happens.

    • Sean II

      When I got to the inner city at night, I protect myself from reverse racism by dressing up as an asian-owned small business. Works like a charm.

  • Stonewall_61

    “. . .reverse racism (along with sexism, etc.) is a) possible and real, but b)
    less seriously problematic than the regular sort.”

    So reverse racism is real; but it’s okay. All the equality crap fed to white people over the past fifty years is just that: Crap. And we should be happy–even grateful–to suffer discrimination once the Democrats successfully complete their quite intentional effort to turn us into a minority.

    Lovely.

    • BrittlePie

      The author at no point said that reverse racism is “okay” and that you should be “grateful” for suffering it, just that’s its less problematic (which is true). Of course, it’s much easier to act faux offended about something if you strawman it to death.

    • Sergio Méndez

      “So reverse racism is real; but it’s okay”

      What part of “less problematic” did you fail to understand?

  • Stonewall_61

    How can racism and reverse racism be different morally? Are they not the same character flaw? And once minorities gain the lion’s share of power–a result our current political system seems designed to bring about–will the personal attitudes of current minorities suddenly change, or will they carry over to produce a new institutional racism in the opposite direction?

    It seems to me that our only hope for peaceful coexistence and equality is to combat the personal attitudes that result in both traditional and reverse racism. By dismissing reverse racism as inconsequential, and therefore nothing to worry about, we set the stage for future racial problems that will be just as bad as those in the past.

    We need to decide whether we want a society based upon true equality, or one based upon racial revenge.

  • OCapitalista

    Racism is racism. There is no forward or reverse to it. It is always stupid, and always self destructive. However fighting racism with racism is the height of idiocy. Sadly that path was chosen in this country decades ago, including by many of the original victims.

    Racism is fought by recognizing that people are people, and defending everyone’s rights equally. You cannot undo crimes of the past by committing crimes in the present.

  • John Say

    Hypotheticals and thought experiements in order to have value either must cleanly address very narrow problems – these do not,

    Or they must account for all the real world consequences intended and otherwise.
    These do not.

    Libertarians flog others for the logical fallacies and shallowness of their thought, we must hold ourselves similarly accountable.

    We know in the real world with free actors that Newtons sum of forces equalling zero is true when there is not a real advantage to a specific force.
    If some discriminatory behavior whether based on skin tone or freckles does not provide a real benefit that it will be countered by a collection of responses summing to zero.

    Post reconstruction Southerners had to impose discrimination through LAWS, because natural discrimination just did not work as desired. It was not in the interests of railroads and other businesses to provide separate accomidations for blacks and whites.
    Mr. Long is correct about the importance of disparities in power – but real power is the legitimate ability to use force – i.e. government. It is not Mr. Shafto or a planet of Shafto’s that are the problem, it is when they start making laws that things really go awry.

    In the real world we see the effects of discrimination and reverse discrimination.
    As a professional employer for many years I profited from the discrimination of many against women. I was able to higher well qualified women at lower cost, they were more loyal, and in many ways proved better employees. The barriers others errected created opportunities for me and the women I hired.
    Nor did it take long for my hires to demonstrate their value and bring their wages up commensurate with their abilities.
    Mr. Long’s 2nd hypothetical needs not have decades centuries or millenia.
    to prove it both true and false concurrently. As above various prejudices depend on both out thoughts, words and our actions. These are constantly divorced at the moment with no need for cyro tanks and millenia. What matters with Sterling ? His thoughts, his words or his actions ? and what if is the real world norm these are not in sync ?

    Prestigious colleges offer minority applicants both preference in admission and often grading. Aside from the obvious positive intended consequences, there are myriads of unintended consequences.

    Neither, employers nor students can tell the difference between the highly skilled minority students who make their way with the benefit of preference and those who do not. As a consequence the greater society discounts ALL minority graduates as beneficiaries of affirmative action. Black professionals throughout th country drag with them the perception that they are inferior to their white peers.
    Often never getting the opportunity to prove otherwise. Their thoughts actions and choices are discounted. They are put on show, rather than relied on for their knowledge or skill.

    These are just a few examples, nor the only unintended consequences.
    We could attempt to stiffle them, but we would be playing an infinite game of whack-a-mole.

    Discrimination direct or reverse without merit will be ultimately neutralized in a free world – there will certainly be some inevitable carnage along the way. Liberty brings us a better world – it does nto promise a perfect world.

    Further we should be very careful about rejecting the ordinary meaning of words. However better we might think our meanings or use might be, we are making the same elitist presumptions of progressives and destroying communications.

    No matter how badly I want liberal to mean what it did a century ago, I can not reclaim the meaning of the word by force.
    I can attempt to shift meaning my way by my word choices – but only if I am still effectively communicating, to those who do not share my wishes.
    Otherwise adopting my own vocabulary with its own meanings traps me in an echo chamber with only those who think and speak alike.

    As to #3 – Mr. Long seems to presume that a constant state of war with neither side prevailing is some neutral and harmless instance.

    That myraids might be maimed and killed in that war is inconsequential – because within each’s domain in their homogenous societies there is no real employment effect of their prejudice.

    Libertarianism is at its core about the limits of the use of force.

    Mr. Long makes the typical progressive conflation of free individuals acting within their rights to reflect their values – good or bad, with power and force.

    My free choices may effect others, my success may magnify the effect of my free choices, but actual power is the use of force, it is not the th legitimate excercise of libertty without force no matter what others might feel about that use of liberty

  • http://CharlieLimaKilo.com/ CharlieLimaKilo

    Blacks can be – and many are – racist. Only a complete moron (or Black racist) would deny that obvious fact. And many, many white people, having for several generations now been accused of irredeemable racism by Black racists and their progressive enablers in the media, in academia and the anarchist movement have learned to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye toward the Black community. If you like your Black racism, you can keep your Black racism!

    • TracyW

      Turning a deaf ear is bad to do. There’s idiots in every group, and, what’s worse, agitators who seek political power by trying to convince a group that another group is the enemy. That’s what the white racists did in the USA and South Africa. It’s very harmful not only to the group discriminated against but the group doing the discriminating.

      • http://CharlieLimaKilo.com/ CharlieLimaKilo

        You’re babbling. Starting with something about “agitators in every group” then casting blame once again on whites in the USA and linking whites in the USA with apartheid in South Africa and then claiming harm to the “group being discriminated against”. A lot of the usual tired dog whistling in your reply and precisely the reason whites, Hispanics and Asians no longer listen and turn away from the ideology-inspired race-baiting and constant hate from racists such as yourself. Be a racist if it makes you happy. Live your dream.

        • Sean II

          Man, there’s lots of places on the web for Democrats like you. Why you gotta bring that liberal race-hustling in here?

          • http://CharlieLimaKilo.com/ CharlieLimaKilo

            Ah. Another narcissistic elitist who either has not read the thread at all or feels sufficiently egotistical that he is compelled to put forth juvenile misdirection as argument. Give it a rest troll.

          • Sean II

            Wait, so now suddenly you’re in favor of reading comments before you reply to them. Make up your mind, dude!

          • http://CharlieLimaKilo.com/ CharlieLimaKilo

            Dude! Just because you’re confused and incoherent, don’t assume everyone else is as well.

        • TracyW

          Do you disagree with me that there are idiots in all racial groups? Do you disagree with me that it is very common across all racial groups for there to be agitators whipping up racial distrust and hatred for political power?

  • BrittlePie

    I think it’s relevant that the kind of racism we
    encounter most often at this point in history is the concealed type. The manner
    in which racism manifests itself is inextricably tied to a long history of
    oppression that made every aspect of black people’s lives, from what they eat
    to what they dress to how they speak, subject to constant scrutiny. And what
    arose from that history is a vast, complex understanding of the unique ways in
    which racism manifests itself. A racist would have a lot to choose from in trying
    to demean a black person without ever having to explicitly say “you are
    inferior”. He has a very large repertoire of slurs, jokes, stories, insinuations and images that his target would instantly recognize as demeaning because of their painful history. A “reverse-racist”, on the other hand, has no such extensive repertoire, and would have to be much more explicit (overt) in his efforts. If he tries to be creative anyway, by putting on whiteface or making fun of something stereo-typically white, he’ll often be met with laughter. And so, does reverse-racism really need its own category if it lacks the complexity and uniqueness that makes racism useful as a separate concept? It would be no less “real” if called prejudice.

    Also, the primary reason “reverse-racism” claims are unhelpful is that they a constant string of false equivalencies. When a white person claims that having a black history month is racist, are they only wrong because they are overestimating
    how racist black history month? Would he be right if they just said that black
    history month is only a tiny bit racist? You could dismiss this example by saying “reverse-racism” isn’t meant to be taken literally as “reverse whatever is usually seen as a racist attitude”, but since that’s exactly what people tend to do it’s fair to ask whether the term itself contributes to this misunderstanding.

  • FreedomFan

    The CriminalObamaRegime certainly has both the power, bigoted racist attitudes and resolve to discriminate against whitey on a massive scale, which eventually will lead to escalating racism and violence on both sides.

    Racism is wrong, and you don’t get a pass because you are black; and you can no longer claim to have no “power” when then power has been in the hands Obama and his racist buddies for the past 6-8 years.

  • Louisiana_Mike

    Consider a society with two groups.

    Group A tells their children that if they are honest and work hard they can be anything they want to be because this is the land of opportunity.

    Group B tells their children that they are victims of an unfair society and we must all work to defeat the powers that keep us from achieving what is fair.

    Now imagine which group of children believe that education is good because it prepares for future success and which group of children follow the rules because society and hence the land of opportunity would be diminished otherwise.

    • TracyW

      The two positions are not mutually exclusive.

  • Tardis1

    I think you missed a counter argument to your 3rd example. Within Winkie territory, the Winkies are dominant over Quadlings, therefore their attitude is formed in a social context similar to frozen Sterling’s.

  • GetSmarty

    This article stretches credulity to the point of silliness.

    Let’s pretend we never read this piece, hypothetically speaking.

  • ReluctorDominatus

    I am always struck by the depth and intensity of intellectual self flagellation I, all too often, run into when I am perusing the net. The last encountered was a 15 page dissertation by Alan Hájek titled “Pascal’s Wager”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition). This article and the many responses remind me of my freshman year ‘Logic’ class with its diagrams and overlapping circles designed to give substance and relative measure to any argument thereby lending weight to what may, or may not be, the better position. As with the expansive analysis of Pascal there is always the feeling that one cannot see the forest for the trees. Pascal was not interested in convincing others that there is a logic progression that leads to belief in God as much as he was simply saying the belief in God provides firm foundation for life and whether
    you believe or not your life is better off for conceptualizing said existence and conducting yourself accordingly. The subject of institutional and, in this case, reverse racism is best presented with reference to some ‘trees’ rather than rationalizations and formula. For instance…while only11 percent of the U.S. labor force African-Americans represent 18 percent of U.S. government workers, including:

    25% of the employees at Treasury,
    25% of the employees at Veterans Affairs,
    31% of the employees State Department,
    37% of the employees at the Department of Education,
    38% of the employees at Housing and Urban Development,
    42% at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.
    55% at the Government Printing Office,
    82% at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, and finally,
    Over 50% at Fannie May and Freddie Mac.

    And you wonder why it is so easy for African-Americans to get HUD housing, VA
    Disability and SSDI? The SSA refuses to release race data so Americans will
    remain in the dark as to the “progressive” plan to transform the programs into
    welfare and employability vehicles…not to mention $20 trillion in the “War on
    Poverty”? The institutionalization of reverse racism takes an even darker turn
    when it comes to black/white white/black crime as we have all witnessed in Ferguson, Missouri.

    Consider the “knockout game” wherein only one person has had federal “hate crime” charges filed against him…a white teen in Texas who was repulsed by blacks engaging, with impunity, the knockout game every day in the news.

    These are very real examples of the stresses put upon white Americans and reams of intellectual paper does nothing to promote the “honest conversation” this administration insists we are too cowardly to have. A conversation made impossible by defining the terms before the conversation even starts.

    As to the argument that black lives are undervalued I submit that you will have my sympathy when De’Marquis Elkins is 6’ under and 13 month old baby Antonio, shot in the face, Santiago is back in his mother’s arms. Then there is Chancey Luna and James Edwards Jr., and Michael Dewayne Jones who shot Australian baseball player Chris Lane “for sport” after making it clear their hatred for “nasty” white people…not a peep about racism from the media or DOInjustice let alone hate crime filings. Finally, the case of Channon Christian and Hugh Newsom, Jr., who were raped, tortured, and murdered after being kidnapped by Letalvis Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, and George Thomas with the help of Vanessa Coleman Eric Dewayne Boyd…all blacks who, of course, never considered race in the commission of their crime.

    There are major problems and a little honesty as opposed to intellectual pirouettes would be better received.

  • INTJ

    Thought experiment #4: On this planet, the most powerful man on earth, and his chief law enforcement officer, are purple. Purple people are somehow “oppressed.” Hmm. Needs more thought, I’m thinking.

  • INTJ

    The definition of “racism” does not require the institutionalization of the theory of racial superiority, only that an individual holds such a theory. Racism can be a pretty big problem if held by any significant number of people of any class. While it is admittedly more problematic if held by the institutions in charge, one need not look past the Weimar Republic to see how a minority of people with racist views can quickly turn into a mass-murdering, world-burning, oh @#$% kind of problem.

  • aed939

    The smaller the minority the more strongly they help people of their own (and exclude everyone else). So a majority tend to be only slightly discriminatory and discriminate in favor of their group against all other minorities. But a small minority is more strongly in favor of their minority against everyone else–which is the majority plus all other minorities. So if you compare the net harm of the sum of the minorities against the majority, it may be worse than the harm of the majority on all of the minorities.

  • CrazyHungarian

    Using the term reverse racism already shows that you have bias in you thinking. Racism is racism and equality is equality, no matter how much pigment the person in question has. There is no reverse about it. It is just as bad and just as shameful. Want to eradicate racism? Your only real choice is to do it within yourself. You can change but you can’t force the way others feel.

    • JoshInca

      You are confusing tribalism and bias, which every human being inherently has, with racism – which is the use of government coercion.

      • CrazyHungarian

        Tribalism and bias each have one main and popular definition, but racism and many. I’m using the the one where one skin pigmented group compares itself against another skin pigmented group and acts negatively against the other. What I disagree with is the liberal definition, wherein with any interaction between a white person and a black person, the white one is automatically the racist and the black one is automatically the victim. Only when using that definition can you have “reverse” racism.

        • JoshInca

          I agree.

          I’m just going further and saying that ‘racism’ requires institutionalized compulsion. Lacking that, it is merely tribalism or bias.

  • DST

    “When I say that prejudice against odd-freckled people is a worse evil on Twin Earth than in our world, I don’t just mean that it has worse consequences (though that’ part of what I mean). I also mean that it evinces a worse motive and character – since it involves knowingly contributing to ongoing oppression, as Shafto’s does not.”

    The prejudice you discuss may be knowing, in that the actor knows he is acting in a prejudiced manner. But it does not necessarily knowingly contribute to ongoing oppression. For the latter to be true, the actor would need to be aware of similar acts of prejudice committed by others.

    So, you’ve generated a rule that says that a bad act is bad in proportion to the knowledge that the actor has of other bad acts committed against the victim. If I steal $20 from a man who has not lost any other money to theft, the theft is no better or worse than if the man I steal from has been repeatedly victimized in ways that I am unaware of. But if I become aware of those victimizations, the theft becomes worse.

    That’s a very strange result. I would think I that I owe the victim the same restitution regardless of who else victimized him, and what I knew of it.

    • BrittlePie

      Yes, you would owe him restitution regardless of the acts of others, and theft never becomes acceptable no matter how well-off the victim is. However stealing from someone who you’ve heard is on the verge of starving is worse from a moral standpoint, no? Granted, that means that what I know of a situation counts at least a little bit (maybe even just a tiny bit) in determining how bad an act is, but I don’t think that’s strange as long as we concede that most of the calculation is rule-based. A racist doctor who turns away a fatally ill patient is evil, but wouldn’t it be even more evil if he knew others doctors had done the same and that he was the patient’s last chance at survival? I think most would agree, though I also know people who stubbornly wouldn’t.

      For the latter to be true, the actor would need to be aware of similar acts of prejudice committed by others.

      Let’s say that you took a time machine back a century ago, walked into a store, and witnessed a black person being turned away. You wouldn’t know, in that instant, whether said black person has experienced similar acts of prejudice in his life, but it’s almost certain that he has. If you ask the prejudiced store owner from the past what percentage of his society’s store owner does he assume also turn away black people, he would give you a higher percentage than if you asked a similarly prejudiced store owner the same question today. The doctor above, who turned away the fatally ill patient, may not know with certainty that other doctors have done the same, but he will know that other doctors are on average more likely to turn him the patient away than if said patient was in the dominant group. The more oppressive the society, the more likely you can assume it is that the patient will find no one to treat him and therefore die.

      • DST

        “However stealing from someone who you’ve heard is on the verge of starving is worse from a moral standpoint, no?”

        Possibly, but that would depend on your morality. In any case, the original post was not about the state in which the victim finds himself, but rather whether he got there through systemic oppression. In other words, is there a difference between stealing from a destitute unoppressed man and a destitute oppressed man? Why would the exact cause of involuntary destitution (or my knowledge of it) matter to the determination of how wrong it is (morally or otherwise) to steal from him?

        “A racist doctor who turns away a fatally ill patient is evil no matter what (reverse-racist or racist, it’s evil either way), but wouldn’t it be even more evil if he knew others doctors had done the same and that he was the patient’s last chance at survival?”

        Yes, it would be, but only because in your hypo you made the doctor in question the last hope. Again, you’re conflating the severity of the situation with the cause.

        If there was one nonracist doctor who would ultimately treat the patient, but only after three racist doctors refused, I don’t think the third racist would be more culpable than the second, who in turn would be no more culpable than the first. I also don’t think that any of the three in my scenario would be more culpable than if they were significantly outnumbered by nonracists.

        Likewise, if a doctor was the only doctor in the area, and he turned away the patient due to prejudice, his action would be no more or less culpable than in your scenario, even though in this scenario, there is no systemic oppression.

        “The more oppressive the society, the more likely you can assume it is that the patient will find no one to treat him and therefore die.”

        I agree, and I think most everyone else here would too.

        Since the original discussion was about comparing reverse discrimination to discrimination, imagine a remedial program undertaken by a hospital to apportion a disproportionately large number of its limited beds to the group being discriminated against. Would a fatally ill patient turned away in favor of another fatally ill patient because the second patient is from the oppressed group have any less of a claim against the hospital than the patient in your scenario?

  • thesafesurfer

    Racism is individual. You choose to act or not act racist. It is a conscious decision. It becomes individually habitual over time.

    • Stephen Barlow

      .hey rubber stamp! Stay busy! This guy stalks people on the internet..

      • thesafesurfer

        It seems you are exactly what you post about.

  • JoshInca

    Your analogies fail because the key feature of racism in any direction, is not individual bias but government sanctioned violence.

  • Guest

    The though problems do not take the International Community into account: — Black people are oppressed by racism everywhere on earth at all times, because blacks fare poorly in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and every city within every nation in which they reside without exception — or it is something black people do or don’t do.

  • Joe Damron

    The thought problems do not take the International Community into account. Consider the following two scenarios:
    (1) Systematic Racism: Black people (West Africans) are oppressed by racism everywhere on earth at all times, because blacks fare poorly in comparison to other groups in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, the Caribbean, and every city within every nation in which they reside without exception; or
    (2) Cultural Failure: The condition of blacks is related to things black people do or don’t do.

    • BrittlePie

      Well, it can’t be (2) since a black person raised in China and a black person raised in France by definition do not share a culture.

      What those continents do have in common, however, is a long history of racism (“Racism in Europe!? Impossible!” /sarc). The correct answer must therefore be scenario (1).

      You’ve made a pretty effective case for the existence of Systematic Racism. Impressive.

      • CT

        To be fair, he’s not using the word ‘culture’ in the way you imply.

        • BrittlePie

          I can’t think of a way of using the word that explains why it would systematically attach itself to a black person regardless of the environment they grew up in. His claim is that black people who grow up on different continents and so are by consequence subjected to completely different beliefs/languages/religions/values still manage to have the same culture . You’re saying this is possible if you use the word “culture” in the unique way he is implying. Can you be more specific? I’m not being facetious here. I genuinely don’t know what you mean.

          • CT

            Look. I don’t want to speak for him. If I had a guess I’d say that his point was more with what he said described ‘cultural failure’ (which is probably not the best way to define ‘culture’) “The condition of blacks is related to things black people do or don’t do”.

            If I had to guess, I’d say he is saying that black people throughout the world seem to behave in similar ways which lead to worse outcomes. He may believe this is a racial thing (which I wouldn’t agree with) or he may think this is a just a question of general ideology (which may or may not be true … I don’t know). The latter certainly is possible since we live in a global world where ideas are quickly disseminated.

  • Chris Kittredge

    reverse racism is a logical fallacy.

    racism of any kind is wrong. that is all.

  • Pingback: Reverse Racism Exists, and it isn’t always “Reverse” | The Only Winning Move()

  • j_m_h

    I didn’t find case three particularly rewarding or convincing.
    I’m completely sure where that case was suppose to go but perhaps the following situation is related.
    Urbanization creates concnetrations of people for many reasons and for many reasons (such as economies of scale, internal and external) the required participation in production is not sufficient to employee all people. If the urban centers were to attract a concentration of lower income, low shill people from some specific ethnic/racal background many of the poor social outcomes relating to poverty would disportionately fall on that group. It’s not quite racism but it does present something that looks like racism.

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