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Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by kulpims.

well, technically, that would just be racism, but point taken.

Ya, Reverse Racism would be a white person making white jokes, or Black making black one...

Racism is Racism
I have nothing against race jokes, as long as they aren't done with Hate.
Russell Peters does the best race jokes!
http://videosift.com/video/Russell-Peters-Chinese-Indians-Jamaicans-Italians

I absolutely HATE this kind of BS...it's as if racism and/or slavery in the past against one group makes it impossible for them to be racist today. To me that's simply insane and an unapologetic excuse for a group to perpetrate the behavior they claim they hate. It also ignores the actual history of slavery, where for most of history most slaves were white, and also ignores the fact that the people who captured and sold Africans into slavery were mostly 'black'.
Racism is making negative assumptions about or discriminating against a 'race' of people as a whole...making fun of (insert race here) people is racism. Period. No matter what your race is.
It effecting one group more than another is a red herring and has absolutely no bearing on it being 'racism' or not...neither does the race of the racist.

rac·ism [rey-siz-uhm]
noun
1. a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others.

3. hatred or intolerance of another race or other races.

I always thought 'reverse racism' should be a white person making jokes about how black people were better than whites.

It's a clever rationalization of hypocrisy. If it's going to be taboo to observe patterns in groups of people demarcated by visible characteristics they were born with, be consistent about it. But I'd argue against that taboo.

What makes racism bad is treating people as specimens of a group rather than unique individuals. Group averages may differ slightly but there's tons of overlap. Common usage of the word "racism" unfortunately conflates a moral aspect (how to treat people) with an epistemological aspect (dogma that all groups are created exactly equal in every way). Epistemology shouldn't be moralized. I could give you lots of examples of sociological and psychological research getting muddled on account of an inflexible dogma that there couldn't be any heritable differences between groups other than the obvious superficial ones. I'd rather conceive of the word racism as a verb describing harmful actions towards people due to their group membership, not a noun denoting a thoughtcrime or speechcrime. Like church and state, or science and religion, epistemology and morality don't go together.

A priori based on generation times and mutation rates you should expect there could be 1/10 as much variation between historically isolated groups of humans as there is between breeds of dogs, since the most recent common ancestor of all domestic dogs is half as far back as humans' most recent common ancestor is (or rather was before 16th and 17th century explorers spread their sperm across the globe) but dogs breed a lot faster. Breeds of dogs demonstrably vary in many behavioral and psychological traits. It's not far fetched to suppose that a variety of environments over the past 100,000 years of humanity pushed population means of behavioral traits in various directions.

The only difference between "racism" and "reverse racism" is that RR is tolerated. eg. Eddie Murphy, Delirious. Plenty of jokes at the expense of white people. Where was the hue and cry?*

Newt's pretty much right, racism is racism. I'm of the opinion that we let everyone crack jokes at everyone else and stop being so fucking sensitive.

With that in mind, we are talking about a comedy bit where the guy uses hyperbole to ramp up to the punchline about white folk not being able to dance... Perhaps we're being a bit too sensitive about it and should just enjoy the joke? ; )

*Not that I'm complaining, that shit was hilarious...

Yes, I am not entirely convinced by the term "reverse racism" either, but that's the one he used so I opted to let it stand.

Nonetheless, it's interesting how people can remain stuck on the label and miss the bigger point.
Yes "racism is racism", but that's not what he is talking about. Let's use a simple example: you're a white guy out in the street (of a western country, that is), minding your own business, when suddenly you are insulted by a black guy out of nowhere. He hates white folks. That guy is an evil racist, you got that right. He even snatches your wallet. You've been mugged by a racist. It sucks. It's an event in your life, but tomorrow will be another day.
Now let's compare that to being a black/colored/minority person: The police can stop, frisk, and detain you. Any day. You may be refused service at some restaurant. Any day. You may not be let in a club. Any day. You may not get that job. You may not get that apartment. If where you live really sucks, you may be in for a mugging or lynching on a seasonal basis. It won't happen all the time of course, but it will happen again and again, with a frequency and severity you will never be able to predict, and when it happens you will have no recourse. It's not 'an event', it defines you life. You expect it around every street corner.

So you and I can encounter a racist, but someone from a minority does experience racism (in other words, they've encountered so many racists in their life they've stopped counting: they talk about 'racism', not 'racists'). These are completely different things. There is simply no way you can actually live that level of oppression if you are not part of a minority.

And this is what he meant. He's not saying that there are no non-white racists, or no racists aiming at whites. He is saying there's no way you can experience actual real-scale racism, as it happens in society, if you yourself are part of the ethnic majority. Quite the difference.

TL;DR: racist != racism

People don't seem to understand, he's making some jokes. That's different than all the actual things that happened to black and brown people over the past hundreds of years.

So you want to say he's a hypocrite because technically he is yeah, sure. Would I wanna trade places with him? Nah man I'm white, like Louis CK said I'd sign up every year.

People's lives are a story, and in their story they are the protagonists, they are the heroes. Telling someone that the hero of the story is actually the beneficiary of a long history of racist policies and colonial or imperial rule doesn't jive. It makes you not the hero, not exactly a villain, but not the hero. So naturally like the comments above people will rebel, they'll get upset.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, Black people live in a different America. It requires empathy and understand not logic to penetrate that reality.

So, it seems you are saying that racism only counts if it's systemic and endemic, but not when it's only on an individual scale?
As a white boy, I WAS part of the "ethnic minority" (while simultaneously being part of the overall "ethnic majority"), I lived in East Palo Alto when it was the murder capital of the US and over 90% "minority". I repeatedly encountered racism against whites in a community that was predominantly black. Does that not count because they only held power in their community (where I lived)? Does it not count because I eventually moved? I don't understand...why would that not be "real scale" racism by a minority group against an "ethnic majority"?
It seems to me like you are stretching to say institutional racism is only one sided because it's MOSTLY one sided.
I feel like most of your examples are really more about (perceived) social/financial status than race....not entirely but mostly.

Yes, I get all that and agree with some of the points you have made. I didn't explain myself fully before.

My point was more about logical consistency: If he got his time machine, went back and did all of those things that he has outlined and then returned to present day to make jokes about white people, that would be plain and simple racism in that fictional environment. "Reverse racism" in that fictional world would be black and brown people complaining about white racists.

What, there are still people who think there are different races other than just human?

...

Msicar! Got it!

This is kind of an aside, but I thought dogs vary so wildly in physical characteristic and behavior (over such a small period) not because of their rate of reproduction, but because favorable traits were selected for/unfavorable traits selected against artificially, by people.

Yes, they breed faster than us which helps the process along and, yes, the desired traits will vary geographically depending on a whole host of cultural and practical concerns, but without our guiding hand there'd be little outside impetus for such seemingly drastic change at all, right?

I think this is both right and wrong...natural selection CAN be even faster (but is not always) at forcing evolutionary change than 'breeding for traits' is, because breeders are not perfect and may allow unwanted traits or incomplete but wanted traits to continue, but nature is a horrible bitch goddess and if your traits really don't work for her, you simply die. That's certainly not always the case, but when it is nature is better at 'selecting' than humans. The rate of reproduction makes either process move faster.
It's true that humans have artificially created more breeds than nature would likely create alone, because we sometimes like traits that would hinder survival and through breeding amplify them to create a 'new breed'.
Nature forces the one's most suited for their environment to thrive, while humans often allow those less suited to live in their environment to survive for human reasons, erasing natural selection from the equation. Without our 'guiding hand' in their evolution, I think it's likely they would likely have even MORE change in some areas (and less in others) because environments are drastically different and different traits would evolve in different places, creating different 'dogs' such as wild dogs in Africa and/or dingos in Australia, which I think (but may be wrong) have evolved so separately that they can't breed with non-"wild dogs". It may lead to less variation in specific areas/populations, but more variation between those from different areas.

Not at all. I certainly did not say it doesn't count. I said it's different.
You said yourself you moved away from there. Minorities can't move away from being refused a loan, getting a better job, or abuses of power. They can't run away from TV hosts seemingly amazed that black people know how to use a fork. They have to deal with more than explicit manifestation of discrimination.
That does in no way diminishes what you had to live through.

To quote Louis CK:
"I'm not trying to say that if you're white you can't complain. I'm just saying that if you're black you get to complain more."

I also want to stress, in line with my previous remark on "labels", that the vocabulary we use to discuss these issues is often not good enough, or at least not precise enough. We want to use (or claim) the word 'racism' because it carries that emotional weight needed to make a statement, even though it obviously means different things to different people. Should we instead use qualifiers like "community discrimination", "systemic discrimination"? Probably. But it's not likely to happen. To me the important point is not how it's called, but that people who are not confronted with this reality understand what effects it has on those who have live it.

I've posted an example of the "white jokes" he's referring to:
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Workshop-For-Whitey

More of a social commentary on common prejudices, really.

Workshop For Whitey™ has been added as a related post - related requested by 9547bis.

I can agree with all of that.

In dogs, artificial selection gave lots of variety that couldn't have existed in nature. But in humans there's no distinction between natural selection and artificial selection. We intelligently select our own mates by stringent criteria. Females favor good providers, and the cognitive traits that make a good provider changed drastically over the past 10,000 years, so you would expect the frequencies of genes affecting cognition to undergo unusually rapid change.