Essay:There is more Racism to White People than Black People

Towards whom is there really more racism?

Asked whether over the past five years there has been more racism to black people or white people in the world, most people, black or white, would unhesitatingly choose black people. Why? Usually they will give one or more of three reasons:

1. In the past when racism was far more acceptable, racism to blacks was far more common;

2. White people are richer, healthier, and generally have far better living conditions than black people;

3. Personal experience (as subject, object or observer) of racism. I will not address the third point except in this paragraph. Anecdotal evidence is both unreliable and unverifiable and most of it lies in the past, so it is not suitable for judging amounts of resent racism. The fact that past racism doesn’t equal present racism also falsifies reason 1.

Can we use Number 2?

A better way of measuring racism is to look at racial inequality. But the USA’s and also probably other country’s health and education systems ensure that racial inequality persists. However, this does not equal racism. The USA is right wing compared to other western countries. It lacks universal health care and is highly capitalist. As a result of this, someone who is poor will probably stay poor, and someone who is rich will probably stay rich. This effect is amplified by the fact that a school will receive funding from the local council, who will get their taxes from a local area so if the area is poor, the school will be too, meaning that someone who lives in a poor area will get a poor education. Just to simplify, the American system is unintentionally keeping the poor poor.

How can we Measure Racism?

Let’s go from what isn’t a measure of racism to what is. One concrete way of measuring racism is through the FBI’s hate crime statistics. Every year in the USA there are numerous crimes committed in whole or in part by individuals due to an unchangeable characteristic in their victims, such as race. As it happens, according to the FBI statistics, a black person in the U.S.A is 2.25 times as likely as a white person to commit a hate crime against the other race. Some might question whether the statistics are neutral. At least in one respect they are discriminatory against white people: the FBI has a victim category for Hispanics but includes them in the white category when they are offenders. This, because hipanics for most crimes have triple the white rate, the 2.25 stat is likely a large understatement. (My reference for this paragraph is http://www.colorofcrime.com/)

There is also the largest and best known form of racism: affirmative action in the form of quotas. Every year, from the FBI to Wal-Mart, thousands of whites are discriminated against in employment, education and promotion so less qualified blacks (and now hispanics) can take their place in order to prove that companies, schools and governments are not racist. Ironic, isn’t it?

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#The_Americas for more on this anti-caucasian practice.)

My Anicdotal Evidence

Last and most definitely least, here is some anecdotal evidence for people who want specific examples: • Dr. Kamau Kambon, former visiting professor of Africana Studies at NC State University; “We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet”

• Jeff Hitchcock (co-founder of the Center for the Study of White American Culture) — “There is plenty to blame whiteness for. There is no crime that whiteness has not committed against people of colour. There is no crime that we have not committed even against ourselves … We must blame whiteness for the continuing patterns today that deny the rights of those outside of whiteness and which damage and pervert the humanity of those of us within it.”

• Noel Ignatiev (white Harvard professor and editor of “Race Traitor” magazine) — “Keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females, too, until the social construct known as the white race is destroyed. Not deconstructed, but destroyed.” (Note that, although he is not talking about killing white people, but getting rid of white skin privlege. Nevertheless, how would people react if this sentance had 'black' instead of 'white'?

• Robin Morgan (white author) — “My white skin disgusts me. My passport disgusts me. They are the marks of an insufferable privilege bought at the price of others’ agony. If I could peel myself inside out I would be glad. If I could become part of the oppressed I would be free.”

• Ann Rhodes (University Relations Vice President at the University of Iowa speaking after it was discovered a black woman staged a phony hate crime) — “I figured it was going to be a white guy between 25 and 55 because they’re the root of most evil.” • Chancellor Williams (Afrocentrist and author of The Destruction of Black Civilization) — “the white man is their Bitter Enemy.”

• Robert Mugabe— “the white man, our real enemy!”

• Susan Sontag (white intellectual) “The white race is the cancer of human history.”

• Chino Wilson (in an editorial in the Daily Collegian, campus newspaper at Penn State University) “white people are devils”

• Sister Souljah (rap artist and black activist) “why not have a week and kill white people?”

• Malcolm X — “The death of over 120 white people is a very beautiful thing.” “The white man is the devil”

• Rev. James Cone — “whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world.” All these quotes are from http://www.amren.com/features/anti-white/hate_speech.html.

Although I am not expecting anyone’s point of view to change instantaneously, I hope we will start to rethink the idea of who is racist to whom and acknowledge that racism is much more complicated than “white people oppress black people as they always have.”