‘Reverse racism’ isn’t real.
Unless they are Irish, Slavic, or other such previously genocided or enslaved white races, white people are not and will not be victims of racism. People argue that because Slavs are the origin for terms like ‘slave’ and Ireland still hasn’t fully recovered, all of white people can be exploited. You cannot. Be exploited. From the top of a system. Historic exceptions like these two exist, because historical context and how it is managed is what makes something problematic or not. (Language, behaviour, practice). Historical and systemic abuse or oppression is what changes things like this (for example ‘Hispanic pride’ is celebrated and ‘white pride’ is not because ‘white pride’ is a term and ideal popularised by the klan and other such violent racist institutes)
I said something similar about how men are very rarely victims of the patriarchy because they’re at the top of it and therefore can’t be exploited in it, but that example also includes forced gender norms that mean they experience the short stick of some things, however, with something like race this is not the case.
Common arguments I see are ‘black washing vs white washing’ or ‘racial stereotyping exists both ways’. I’m gonna debunk these.
Black washing vs white washing
White washing has always been used to push down people of colour. This is true for paintings, historical descriptions, the fucking bible 😭, and is used alongside things like blackface caricatures to diminish what is real and exaggerate prejudice ideas and stereotypes. This has never happened for white people. Representation of people of colour in media up until recent years has always followed the archetype this has left behind - large lips, messy hair, red bows, giant locs, ext. remember dumbo? The bird jimmy crow? Yeah he’s based entirely off of the caricature of black men in performance and is named after a law that set back rights for people of colour for decades. I’m not kidding there’s deep dives on this please look it up. Why do you think clowns have giant curly fros and big red lips? Depending on which iteration, this is a mockery of blackface caricatures OR the Irish… This is what leads to people searching for representation in media that does not give it to them at all or does not do it justice. For example the sheer amount of whining when people headcanon mlp characters as different ethnicities because ‘they’re literally pastel colours though’ (literal kids show) even though the closest mlp fans get to cultural diversity is discord and the zebra (not even a pony), or maybe the changelings at a push. To say ‘black washing erases white characters’ just isn’t true. You have MILLIONS of variations in white characters and their dynamics, the majority is fleshed out, varied, and respectful. This is very rare for media of poc. Very few times have I seen a black character that doesn’t fit the visual mould somehow OR a character personality stereotype. When people of colour have been pushed down and erased systematically for SO long and SO intensely, a couple fanarts aren’t that deep and do not erase anything. On the contrary, removing a characters melanin is just enforcing negative practise. It’s like having two thousand blue marbles and moving one to the red jar with twenty in it and whining even though a solid third of the ones in the blue jar used to be red 🤷🏻♀️. (Eg. Raven and starfyre from teen titans, sunspot, bane) Things like colourism also come into play, and how whitewashing literally has levels to it, and this has never existed for ‘blackwashing’. People of colour and their features in media have been completely erased from the ‘normal standard’ so much so that concept artists barely include variation in the races they do try to portray - black hairstyles outside of cornrows and jumbo locs are RARE to come across because they aren’t shown enough for people to even consider learning how to portray them.
On an alternate note, race in media often times isn’t actually set. Disney, everybody’s favourite example, has like maybe 3-4 white characters who’s stories are even remotely dependant on their whiteness, whereas any other raced character has their experiences and plot points dependant on this. The areas they are in are loosely inspired by regional architecture or aesthetics, and besides arendale, are not real and do not have a set ethnicity. Think of a Disney character (human preferably). Okay, now if they were a different race, could you reacreate the entire movie word for word without a single change? If you said yes, this character is raceless. Disney is just a company that set pale white as the default for design because they are built from a racist point in time. If you said no, then racebending them is wrong due to their set race effecting the story. However, there are layers to this - Snow White for example, who is portrayed as ‘pale as snow with rosy cheeks’ can also be applied to different regional expectations of the Asian beauty standard, and while her appearance is integral to the story, white as the default isn’t the only option because of this. (We should also absolutely be questioning sickly pale = beautiful but that’s a whole other thing). Characters such as John smith in Pocahontas is a real person who’s entire character drive is white coloniser in the story and context is obviously not going to make sense race swapped, but Ariel? The fish? The fish woman in a not real place who’s only key character difference is her voice and the fact she’s a fish? Who cares. If you were to witewash tiana, her story wouldn’t make sense at all considering the set time period and multiple clear reference to racial stereotyping and discrimination she faces.
The same concept of gender is applicable when I argue about ‘non gendered language isn’t applicable’ but that’s also a whole other thing
The concept of racism is a mixture of things. It is made up of things like racial prejudice, racial stereotypes that fuel it, and historical systematic oppression. The majority of white people with few exceptions have not experienced systemic racial oppression or prejudice, and in recent decades have only really experienced racial stereotyping, which is often centered around colonialism, and the association between class and race. There is no single study on people who are killed, beaten, or have to be legally protected because they’re Caucasian. Institutional racism in schools, formal control units like the police, and ethnocentric values around stereotyping has always put people of colour on the shit end - ‘white peoples can’t season’ or ‘white folk have no rythm’ does NOT matter. A white man and a black man can be (theoretically) turned away from an opportunity due to racial stereotyping (again, only happens one way realistically despite equality acts) the white man will get home safely, the black man has a ridiculously high comparative chance to be heckled, stop and searched, or assumed to be violent in their own home area. Look up stop and search statistics on race it’s ridiculous.
White people being stereotyped is simple, slightly rude little concepts or social behaviours (‘white people smile’), whereas racial stereotyping for people of colour comes from laws, media inspired by slavery and historical racism, and real crime cases. Being told you can’t dance isn’t a jab at your ancestors. Being laughed at for eating chicken is a reminder that the only thing slaves could eat was the few small chicken they were permitted to keep because they couldn’t sell or lay eggs big enough.
In this theoretical that people really enjoy brining up of ‘being prevented from something because youre white’ genuinely never happens outside of institutions that pride themselves on care for people of colour (like how many black centred hair joints won’t hire white stylists due to a fear of misunderstanding or performance) because historically and routinely, white people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing in these fields due to social restriction of education about black social care. Generalising this to be racial discrimination and ignoring the context behind it is just silly.
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