I once saw a movie called 'Undercover Brother'. It was a black spoof of James Bond (or indeed Austin Powers). It would have to be the most racist film I have ever seen. The majority of the movie is spent lampooning white people. From our smaller stature to what's in our pants, this movie used every possible stereotype and racial slur against white people. Yet this movie was released. If you reversed this movie and used white people lampooning black people then it would be shot down as a racist film. Why can one situation be okay but then when you reverse it it becomes bad?
I call it Reverse Racism. You can't tease or question minorities or their beliefs but if it's the majority then that's okay. Racism against white people is acceptable it seems. Some would argue that this is because we are the majority and it comes with the territory. That would be true if we were given some extra privilege in society. But white society has gone out of it's way to rid itself of racism and prejudice. We overturned the segregation laws in the US. We ensured that everybody regardless of race, creed, religion or gender could get a job and had the same rights as everyone else. But along the way we went too far. We started treating minorities better then the majority. We started giving them extra hand-outs (abstudy etc). We started ensuring that you couldn't tease their religion (Islam etc), yet teasing Christianity was okay.
Why is it that when it was discovered that Catholic Priests were discovered having sex with young boys there was a huge public outcry. But when Aboriginals were raping their own children we swept it under the rug or blamed it on their 'history'.
It's an all or nothing proposition. Either it should be okay to tease and poke fun at all religions or races, or no religion or race an be teased. Just because I'm in the majority doesn't make it okay for you to tease my race or my religion.
Comments
This reminds me of a bake sale run by the Young Conservatives of Texas (CNN Education, 25/11/2003).
I'd say it's more "selective racism" than "reverse racism" (not to mention the fact that the term "reverse racism" doesn't really make much sense). It's racist to offer discounts at a food stall at a similar rate to what universities are offering, but it's not racist to lower UAIs or rates for entry at universities...
Sexism, like racism has also gotten to the point where (to steal your bad term) it's become "reverse sexism". Women are becoming the preferred candidates in workplaces so that employers appear to be supporting equal opportunity, women receive scholarships into certain degrees where it's deemed that degree has a low rate of female participation.
However, attempts to attract men into degrees with a low rate of male participation (such as teaching) is met with a slap in the face from Pru Goward (Australian Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission, 9/03/2004).