Aamer Rahman is an Australian stand-up comedian of Bangladeshi descent. This “Reverse Racism” clip was recently shown at an Understanding Racism workshop I attended and is from Rahman’s album “Fear of a Brown Planet.”
The reason I’m posting this is 1.) It’s genuinely funny — if we can’t laugh at ourselves, we are in trouble. 2.) It’s true! It’s actually very educational if you allow yourself to be humble and put yourself in another person’s shoes. Let’s be honest, many white people hate putting themselves in the shoes of people of color. Many white people simply refuse to even attempt to do this. Which is sad, but is so needed when we are trying to understand issues like white privilege or learn our nation’s actual history and how that affects us today. How can we love someone if we don’t try to understand what it’s like to be in their shoes?
So sit back and enjoy. I hope you laugh and learn. You know it will be good (and that I’ll get some grief for posting this) when it has 22,000 likes on YouTube but also 2500 dislikes!
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Perhaps we should reserve the term reverse racism for a slogan “Reverse Racism”. The term racism is for any group that dislikes or puts down another “race” or group of people due to some observable difference. Generally, I believe, it is worse when it comes from a group of people that has an advantage or holds the power. In the past, in history, this occurred in areas where people from the middle-east and Africa did invade parts of Europe (Spain and the Balkans for example). Today we often see it from “Anglos” against browner people (unless an individual is an albino, we all have melanin, that pigment that gives us some amount of brown or tan coloration); or ongoing in Africa among various tribal groups, usually whichever has power at the time over the tribal groups that don’t have power; or how the Kirds are treated where they live as a minority.
Thanks for the comment K. I don’t think Aamer was trying to say that brown people have never tried to conquer white people (or that they don’t try conquering each other), I think he’s just pointing out that white people have been much more successful at it! Especially in looking at the conquering of Native Americans in the United States and Canada, and the conquering of Aborigines in Aamer’s native country of Australia, as well as the European colonization of Africa and the Caribbean that created and left systemically broken power systems to this day that keep millions trapped in extreme poverty.