Your Opinion: Black People Can't Be Racist Towards White People, just predigest

The white majority (White Supremacy) is the dominant force in the US and is ownership of most technology, jobs, major businesses and wealth. They can afford to act out their racism against blacks, a poor minority who is not in the same power league to fight back. Therefore, if they are racist, they had better keep it well hidden or else be deprived of even more than they have now.

I was in response to Max. If you are going to criticize someone's language, you should be careful of your own.

Nobody was criticizing anything but I guess.

Dash baby, get over it, the boys are just messing around.

Just go ahead and express your thoughts on racism and prejudice.

That made me smile. Anyway, I personally believe that black people can be racist against whites. It doesn't make sense for blacks to be racist against every other race expect whites. I am black and I have met some black people who don't like white people because of the past and present events going on.

Hey now, some of my best friends are white.

Well, perhaps it's been your experience that blacks will only be racist against whites, but I beg to differ.

One group of people may not only be racist against another due to past events, but because of competition of resources available to them in the present and the past as well.
I'm sure there's a lot of other reasons as well.

The white dominant power can regard the black race as racially inferior to them, for various reasons, and can treat them accordingly, marginalizing them, segregating them, enslaving them, and buying and selling them like property or animals--in other words, regarding them, and treating them, as sub-human. Whites have the power to be, and think, and behave as, racists, and they have certainly done so.

Blacks really haven't been in a societal position where they could logically regard whites as racially inferior to them, and, in that sense, one could argue that they can't be racist toward whites. Blacks can hold negative or biased or prejudiced attitudes toward whites, but, because of the white supremacy power structure and cultural dominance, it would be difficult for blacks to view whites as a racially inferior group.

I think that viewing another race as inferior is an essential component of racism that separates it from prejudice.

Yes, of course they can be racist towards whites, and it doesn't matter what position they hold in the social hierarchy. If they believe one race is inherently superior or inferior to another they are racist, by definition. If they believe the white race is inherently superior or inferior to another then they are racist as respects whites.

This statement by Al Sharpton is racist (and probably homophobic)

"White folks was in caves while we was building empires.... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it."

The reality is that blacks do not really have much of an opportunity to express racist sentiments about whites because they, and not whites, as a general group, have been on the low end of the social scale in America for as long as they have been in this land. This is why Sharpton needed to harken back to ancient times when African empires existed. Of course this does not mean that blacks are an inferior race, just that the circumstances of their history in America aren't conducive to their claiming superiority over whites. They could, though, claim a moral superiority because of these circumstances but they would have to assert that it was a superiority that is inherent to the black race (regardless of circumstances) for it to be racism.

Racism is often seen as synonymous with bigotry and prejudice but all three are distinctly different words in meaning. I would say that there is far more bigotry and prejudice (concerning whites) than racism, but the latter is certainly possible. Where we might see more example of racism in the black community is in the case of latinos and Jews, but here it's tricky because neither can be considered races (and there is quite a body of opinion that the entire concept of "race" is nonsense).

I'm not sure it really matters except to academics and people who wish to preserve "racist" a term uniquely theirs to sling at others. Whether racism, bigotry or prejudice, it's negative, disruptive and damaging, and not flattering or justifiable in any person or group of people.

Unfortunately it's also fairly easy to slip into at times.

Racism is as racism does, regardless of race, and no matter where you go, there you are.