It isn't "Reverse Racism", it is all Racism. Any race to any other race, it is Racism. "Reverse Racism" is as meaningless as "Square Circle".
The definition that's usually used in sociology involves structural power and, perhaps most importantly, white supremacy. Particularly the latter point means that the term racism, in the academic context, always refers to power dynamics that flow out of white supremacy.
There are still valid critiques (such as, arguably, unfalsifiablity) and, personally, I don't think the directionality built into the term help us as much as it hinders the conversation—especially given the divergence from the colloquial meaning of "racism". At the same time, though, systemic power is on the side of (certain) white people and the effects of discrimination are compounded by systemic power differentials. It seems important to bring that aspect of racism into the conversation.
Pretty typical for Americans to make themselves the center of the definition of a basic term.
Just because some academics redefine a term, doesn't make someone else's argument invalid.
Not my field (and please correct me if I'm wrong), but I believe there are other terms like "racial discrimination" that didn't come from white supremacist thought, and that can be used in academia to describe mistreatment of white people on the basis of their skin.
This does mean that, yes, so-called 'reverse' racism in such contexts, particularly when accompanied by systemic prejudice against e.g. whites and asians (such as an implied theory that they have less "character", "well-roundedness" or "diversity" than other groups) is in fact racism.
That is 100% american. I would advise against going to Europe, the east specifically, and claim that "you can't be racist against whites".
And to be rational systemic racism is just a subset of the concept of racism as a whole.
This term, reverse racism, has always confused me. What would then racism and reverse racism be defined in Japan a predominant Japanese society?
The definition in itself is racist. It's doublethink!
Rewriting the meaning of terms so as they mean the opposite of what is socially/historically expected or contradictory is evil because it undermine discourse. As proposed by Habermas, norms are derived inter-subjectively in processes of argumentation between individuals. In this framework it's an presupposition that participants in communicative exchange are using the same linguistic expressions in the same way. The latter is tautological as any argument that is constructed with an unmeaningful term violates the three laws of logic: P is P; P is not non-P; either P or non-P. The externals social/historic and replaced meaning of the term doesn't matter for this analysis and just that they are contradictory.
TLDR: It's not even unfalsifiable, just plainly meaningless.
Maybe explain what is your problem with distinguishing these two behaviors? Are you afraid that a fix would only be applied to a subgroup? Naming patterns makes communication more efficient.
And then now define a new term, "reverse racism" to mean a better/lesser quality of racism based on which racial or ethnic group it originates from, you are being racist in your very definition.
It is as ridiculous as a square circle.
To disconnect emotions something like: scientist first not including some outliers in the data set, but after having been scolded for that, adding a few random points here and there so that he's not accused of it again. Both bad, both fabricating data, but we can still talk about them naming them differently.
That said, since racism is in the name of that subgroup, I can see parent comment's point more clearly now, and yes it makes sense, at least given that name.
I might be wrong about that, but it's my current understanding.
This happens very often because that race is also a minority.
So much so that most experience of racism is also the experience of being discriminated for being a minority.
That doesn't make racism against a majority in the wider population less racist. It just doesn't make it racism and not minority discrimination.
The "reverse" of something that isn't strictly a logical statement could mean any number of things: is "reverse racism" positive discrimination? Is it the lack of discrimination because of race? Is it discrimination because of lack of racial identity? is it simply "msicar" (racism spelled backwards)?
What one tries to say is: "Reverse racism" is supposed to mean "racist behavior towards a group of people that make out the majority of the population". That has a word: It's "racism". It unfortunately overlaps with the type of racism that happens on minorities, but there's nothing "reverse" about it. "Reverse" carries some undertone of "retributal", as in being racist back because of racist treatment... there's a whole can of worms of implied meaning here that is not well-intended or seeks to understand why people behave racist. Whereas if you use the term "racism" to describe this behavior, it's actually well-defined.
This is the really questionable comment
The term is just bad.
In this case, it could be called "race quotas" or something.
Counter question: Which discrimination based on race is right?
Well, he doesn't really "argue" it, he just asserts it, and I can't say I'm convinced, but the book is a massive bestseller and these ideas are very influential.
How can introducing more disparities reduce the average of disparities?
But I don't think we're using the word "discrimination" in the same way as each other. What I mean is this: if (say) black people are underrepresented in academia, Kendi thinks that universities should discriminate in favor of black people to rectify this disparity. And the same logic should apply across all sectors of society - we should actively discriminate everywhere until all races are equally represented in all endeavours. As Kendi puts it, "the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination." It's a simple philosophy... one might even call it simplistic.
Coleman Hughes wrote a good review of the book. I agree fully with Hughes: https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-be-an-antiracist
I can't imagine such a scenario. Maybe you could give an example?
It is not that simple. I think of it as plain racism vs acceptable/approved/sanctioned racism. In the first case, you will have the politicians and media all talking about how bad this is. In the second case, the only response you will get from this crowd is a collective "meh."
The preferred term in use seems to be "racial equity".
You should. The media won't, because it now becomes a loaded term. You can make fun of "reverse" racism, but not "sanctioned" racism.
Sometimes I wonder whose side these so-called centrist/neutral or even expressly right-wing publications are on because they often present the weakest argument in favor of an issue that is all but ready for opponents to demolish.
"Reverse" racism is because it is describing the fact that straight white men can no longer rely on their sex and race and sexual orientation to help narrow the field of competitors for whatever they want. It's the reverse of racism, in which the field of competition is narrows to those without certain apparent traits or attributes. The reverse of racism, not racism pointed the other direction.
He adopted the null hypothesis that his lack of acceptance to the program was due to random chance alone. The evidence used to reject that null hypothesis consisted of some hand-picked samples from a subpopulation of applicants with whom he had social-networking contacts (and sure, he's got some friends who don't look like him, maybe even some of his best friends), further categorized by him and his collaborator subjectively into racial groups and the proxy metric of being on the dean's list, compiled into some regression numbers of unspecified strength. There are plenty of opportunities for skew and bias an the method of his research. If this study was robust enough, there would be plenty of parties interested enough that it would be a career-making, not career-breaking publication.
The author of the piece simply wanted an anecdata to support his racist views, and if you're thinking "hell yeah, white guys gotta stand together to stop those people" you're exactly the base he's pandering to.
Let's have an intelligent discussion, rather than an ideological waste of time...
If you wish to discuss the ideas and merit behind them it would be beneficial to go to the original source, and Peterson has primacy of publication here.