Why reverse racism doesn't work

-“I got bullied in school for being white. You can’t tell me that’s not racist!”

No, this is called you being picked on by a mean child.

-“Someone called me cracker!”

This is someone calling you by your privilege.

-“People can be racist against white people too.”

No, they cannot. There is an inherent logical fallacy in your argument that will never make it true. However, white people can be discriminated against. Discrimination is different from racism.

Let’s start from the beginning. Your first step is to accept that “a hatred or intolerance of another race” is not the definition of racism. The dictionary is wrong. Get over it.

Racism is when intolerance in government laws, attitudes and ideals of a society are ingrained in a culture to the point where patterns of discrimination towards a certain race are institutionalized as normal. If you keep this in mind, you’ll understand that reverse racism doesn’t- and can’t- exist.

There is another saying “Racism (or sexism) = prejudice + power. POC (people of color) can be prejudiced against white people. But they can never have power, i.e. a whole system of structured support that backs them. White people often don’t understand how much power they have. Just ONE white person has more power to do actual harm to a black person than one hundred black people do to that white person. A white person can KILL a black person without any consequences, while if the situation was reversed you can bet the killer wouldn’t see the outside of a prison cell for a long, long time.

When white people complain about reverse racism, they are not complaining about losing their RIGHTS. What they are complaining about is losing their PRIVILEGE.

White people can never call someone else racist against them because that ‘someone else’ does not have the power to OPPRESS them. The person has the power to be mean. To hurt feelings. But not to OPPRESS.

THAT is the key difference. When a POC is mean to you, they are JUST being mean to you. Their entire society is not ACTIVELY discriminating against and oppressing you.

Calling Out Bigotry

Colonialism

"[C]olonialism and injustice are never consensual: they are always achieved through the use of force, and perpetuated through the brutalization and degradation of the native people. It was, after all, Mao who announced that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." 

— Blood In The Snows (Reply to Wang Lixiong)  (by Tsering Shakya | New Left Review | May-June 2002) http://www.friendsoftibet.org/databank/tibethistory/tibeth3.html

Today's word, boys and girls, is colonialism. What is it, you say? Wikipedia defines it as the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony, and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by colonizers from the metropole. Colonialism is a set of unequal relationships between the metropole and the colony and between the colonists and the indigenous population.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. Frequently, colonialism and imperialism are treated as synonyms.

Examples of this are the Crusades, Britain and the thirteen colonies, France and the Haiti, and Spain and Latin America to name a very few. How is this even relevant? Colonialism is not a thing of the past.

Indonesia is seeing a new corporate colonialism 

Colonialism Today

Neocolonialism on an image of Frida Kahlo

A parody found on YouTube concerning the struggle in Tibet (read the comments, the video itself is silly)

Mayan Priests denied access to Guatemala ceremonial sites

Guatemala, the heart of Mayan culture, has started their festivities for the 13 Baktun - the last cycle of the Mayan calendar, due to end on Friday, December 21, 2012. But sadly the celebrations were dominated by staged government shows which were neither led nor shared by indigenous communities or spiritual leaders.

On stage, non-indigenous peoples were wearing indigenous clothes in a folklore show while non-indigenous attendees from the Guatemalan elites were in the most important ceremonial Mayan center, Tikal, waiting for the new era to arrive. Indigenous peoples were left outside, were they were demonstrating, playing the traditional instrument marimba. 

Related, due to this party, an ancient stone temple at Tikal, the largest archaeological site and urban center of the Mayan civilization was ruined.

So not only were the indigenous Mayans not allowed to celebrate on their ceremonial site, their ceremonial site was destroyed.