Anita Sarkeesian says that “reverse racism” is a “myth”. Amy Palamountain calls it, “erasure”. Tell that to the family of Ross Andrew Parker, whose life was subject to “erasure” in a killing which even the Guardian called, “racist”. Picture by Wikipedia user ‘Shakehandsman’, released under CC-BY-SA 3.0 – attribution and license linked here.
Recently GitHub provoked a storm of protest after staffer Amy Palamountain amended a proposed ‘Open Code of Conduct’ such that complaints of harassment arising from ‘reverse-isms’ such as ‘reverse racism’ would not be acted upon. Palamountain is on record as saying, “[…] The intent is deliberate, and I strongly disagree it should be altered to be more lenient to privileged groups […]”. Recent British examples illuminate the terrible folly of that statement.
In my previous article I set out potential legal problems with the TODOGroup Code of Conduct. In this article I want to address the moral and policy arguments around the extreme left belief that ‘reverse racism’ does not exist and cannot do harm. I found this exceptionally offensive as a person living in post-Rotherham Britain.
Consider this extract –
“Racism was once defined as ‘prejudice plus power’ – […] However, the ‘racist murders’ of Kriss Donald in Glasgow in 2004 and Ross Parker in Peterborough in 2001, young white men killed by Asians, demonstrate how society has been forced to redefine racism”.
Is this a Conservative website? A right-wing blog? Nope. I am quoting the BBC (archive here). The brutal killing, in which a 17 year old called Ross Andrew Parker was beaten with a hammer, stabbed and kicked to death before being left in a pool of his own blood caught national news in the UK for its violence and the explicitly racist motives of the killers.
The ideas espoused by controversial activists such as Anita Sarkeesian when she says that “sexism is prejudice + power” (archive here) or when she talks of the “myth” of “reverse racism” (archive here) are ideas that even the BBC admitted were horribly, tragically wrong nearly 10 years ago. The Guardian agreed – no weaselling about ‘reverse-isms’ they called it a ‘racist killing’ (archive here).
