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The words are so silly, so juvenile, so utterly pathetic that they hardly
qualify as racial slurs at all, let alone slurs on a par with those that
have been historically deployed against people of color.

The lack of symmetry between a word like honky and a slur such as "nigger"
was made apparent in an old Saturday Night Live skit, with Chevy Chase and
guest, Richard Pryor.

In the skit, Chase and Pryor face one another and trade off racial epithets
during a segment of Weekend Update. Chase calls Pryor a "porch monkey."
Pryor responds with "honky." Chase ups the ante with "jungle bunny." Pryor,
unable to counter with a more vicious slur against whites, responds with
"honky, honky." Chase then trumps all previous slurs with "nigger," to which
Pryor responds: "dead honky."

The line elicits laughs all around, but also makes clear, at least
implicitly that when it comes to racial antilocution, people of color are
limited in the repertoire of slurs they can use against whites, and even the
ones of which they can avail themselves sound more comic than hateful. The
impact of hearing the antiblack slurs in the skit was of a magnitude
unparalleled by hearing Pryor say "honky" over and over again.

As a white person I always saw terms like honky or cracker as evidence of
how much more potent white racism was than any variation on the theme
practiced by the black or brown.

When a group of people has little or no power over you institutionally, they
don't get to define the terms of your existence, they can't limit your
opportunities, and you needn't worry much about the use of a slur to
describe you and yours, since, in all likelihood, the slur is as far as it's
going to go. What are they going to do next: deny you a bank loan? Yeah,
right.

So whereas "nigger" was and is a term used by whites to dehumanize blacks,
to imply their inferiority, to "put them in their place" if you will, the
same cannot be said of honky: after all, you can't put white people in their
place when they own the place to begin with.

Power is like body armor. And while not all white folks have the same degree
of power, there is a very real extent to which all of us have more than we
need vis-à-vis people of color: at least when it comes to racial position,
privilege and perceptions.

Consider poor whites. To be sure, they are less financially powerful than
wealthy people of color. But that misses the point of how racial privilege
operates within a class system.

Within a class system, people tend to compete for "stuff" against others of
their same basic economic status. In other words, rich and poor are not
competing for the same homes, bank loans, jobs, or even educations to a
large extent. Rich competes against rich, working class against working
class and poor against poor. And in those competitions racial privilege most
certainly attaches.

Poor whites are rarely typified as pathological, dangerous, lazy or
shiftless the way poor blacks are, for example. Nor are they demonized the
way poor Latino/a immigrants tend to be.

When politicians want to scapegoat welfare recipients they don't pick Bubba
and Crystal from some Appalachian trailer park; they choose Shawonda
Jefferson from the Robert Taylor Homes, with her seven children.

And according to reports from a number of states, ever since so-called
welfare reform, white recipients have been treated far better by
caseworkers, are less likely to be bumped off the rolls for presumed failure
to comply with new regulations, and have been given far more assistance at
finding new jobs than their black or brown counterparts.

Poor whites are more likely to have a job, tend to earn more than poor
people of color, and are even more likely to own their own home. Indeed,
whites with incomes under $13,000 annually are more likely to own their own
home than blacks with incomes that are three times higher due to having
inherited property.

None of this is to say that poor whites aren't being screwed eight ways to
Sunday by an economic system that relies on their immiseration: they are.
But they nonetheless retain a certain "one-up" on equally poor or even
somewhat better off people of color thanks to racism.

It is that one-up that renders the potency of certain prejudices less
threatening than others. It is what makes cracker or honky less problematic
than any of the slurs used so commonly against the black and brown.

In response to all this, skeptics might say that people of color can indeed
exercise power over whites, at least by way of racially-motivated violence.
Such was the case, for example, this week in New York City where a black man
shot two whites and one Asian-Pacific Islander before being overpowered.
Apparently he announced that he wanted to kill white people, and had hoped
to set a wine bar on fire to bring such a goal to fruition.

There is no doubt his act was one of racial bigotry, and that to those he
was attempting to murder his power must have seemed quite real. Yet there
are problems with claiming that this "power" proves racism from people of
color is just as bad as the reverse.

First, racial violence is also a power whites have, so the power that might
obtain in such a situation is hardly unique to non-whites, unlike the power
to deny a bank loan for racial reasons, to "steer" certain homebuyers away
from living in "nicer" neighborhoods, or to racially profile in terms of
policing. Those are powers that can only be exercised by the more dominant
group as a practical and systemic matter.

Additionally, the "power" of violence is not really power at all, since to
exercise it, one has to break the law and subject themselves to probable
legal sanction.

Power is much more potent when it can be deployed without having to break
the law to do it, or when doing it would only risk a small civil penalty at
worst. So discrimination in lending, though illegal is not going to result
in the perp going to jail; so too with employment discrimination or racial
profiling.

There are plenty of ways that more powerful groups can deploy racism against
less powerful groups without having to break the law: by moving away when
too many of "them" move in (which one can only do if one has the option of
moving without having to worry about discrimination in housing.)

Or one can discriminate in employment but not be subjected to penalty, so
long as one makes the claim that the applicant of color was "less
qualified," even though that determination is wholly subjective and rarely
scrutinized to see if it was determined accurately, as opposed to being a
mere proxy for racial bias. In short, it is institutional power that matters
most.

Likewise, it's the difference in power and position that has made recent
attempts by American Indian activists in Colorado to turn the tables on
white racists so utterly ineffective.

Indian students at Northern Colorado University, fed up by the unwillingness
of white school district administrators in Greeley to change the name and
grotesque Indian caricature of the Eaton High School "Reds," recently set
out to flip the script on the common practice of mascot-oriented racism.

Thinking they would show white folks what it's like to "be in their shoes"
and experience the objectification of being a team icon, indigenous members
of an intramural basketball team renamed themselves the "Fightin' Whiteys,"
and donned t-shirts with the team mascot: a 1950's-style caricature of a
suburban, middle class white guy, next to the phrase "every thang's gonna be
all white."

Funny though the effort was, it has not only failed to make the point
intended, but indeed has been met with laughter and even outright support by
white folks. Rush Limbaugh actually advertised for the team's t-shirts on
his radio program, and whites from coast to coast have been requesting team
gear, thinking it funny to be turned into a mascot, as opposed to demeaning.

Of course the difference is that it's tough to negatively objectify a group
whose power and position allows them to define the meaning of another
group's attempts at humor: in this case the attempt by Indians to teach them
a lesson. It's tough to school the headmaster, in other words.

Objectification works against the disempowered because they are
disempowered. The process doesn't work in reverse, or at least, making it
work is a lot tougher than one might think.

Turning Indians into mascots has been offensive precisely because it is a
continuation of the dehumanization of such persons over many centuries; the
perpetuation of the mentality of colonization and conquest.

It is not as if one group--whites--merely chose to turn another
group--Indians--into mascots. Rather, it is that one group, whites, have
consistently viewed Indians as less than fully human, as savage, as "wild,"
and have been able to not merely portray such imagery on athletic banners
and uniforms, but in history books and literature more crucially.

In the case of the students at Northern, they would need to be a lot more
acerbic in their appraisal of whites, in order for their attempts at
"reverse racism" to make the point intended. After all, "fightin" is not a
negative trait in the eyes of most white folks, and the 1950's iconography
chosen for the uniforms was unlikely to be seen as that big a deal.

Perhaps if they had settled on "slave-owning whiteys," or "murdering
whiteys," or "land-stealing whiteys," or "smallpox-giving-on-purpose
whiteys," or "Native-people-butchering whiteys," or "mass raping whiteys,"
the point would have been made.

And instead of a smiling "company man" logo, perhaps a Klansman, or skinhead
as representative of the white race: now that would have been a nice
functional equivalent of the screaming Indian warrior. But see, you gotta go
strong to turn the tables on the man, and ironic sarcasm just ain't gonna
get it nine times out of ten.

Without the power to define another group's reality, Indian activists are
simply incapable of turning the tables by way of well-placed humor.

Simply put, what separates white racism from any other form, and what makes
anti-black, anti-brown, anti-yellow, or anti-red humor more biting and more
dangerous than its anti-white equivalent is the ability of the former to
become lodged in the minds of and perceptions of the citizenry.

White perceptions are what end up counting in a white-dominated society. If
whites say Indians are savages (be they of the "noble" or vicious type),
then by God, they'll be seen as savages. If Indians say whites are
mayonnaise-eating Amway salespeople, who the hell is going to care? If
anything, whites will simply turn it into a marketing opportunity. When you
have the power, you can afford to be self-deprecating, after all.

The day that someone produces a newspaper ad that reads: "Twenty honkies for
sale today: good condition, best offer accepted," or "Cracker to be lynched
tonight: whistled at black woman," then perhaps I'll see the equivalence of
these slurs with the more common type to which we've grown accustomed.

When white churches start getting burned down by militant blacks who spray
paint "kill the honkies" on the sidewalks outside, then maybe I'll take
seriously these concerns over "reverse racism."

Until then, I guess I'll find myself laughing at the thought of another old
Saturday Night Live skit: this time with Garrett Morris as a convict in the
prison talent show who sings:

Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see.
Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see.
And once I kill all the whiteys I see
Then whitey he won't bother me
Gonna get me a shotgun and kill all the whiteys I see.

Sorry, but it just isn't the same.

Tim Wise is an anti-racist essayist, activist and lecturer. He can be
reached at timjwise@msn.com
 

And the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them" (Genesis 11:6)

  Everything that the mind can imagine is possible in this day and age.  All of humankind is as young as a boy when compared to the life of Mother Earth.  Why would we ever want to destroy beautiful life with such ill hatred?  What if we are the only living souls in the whole universe?  We wouldn't want to put everything that is Godly beautiful to waste in this finely tuned universe and we all know this.  Life is obviously the choice over death and anyone who would want to bring this world to complete death would be brought to his own death before he could do any damage.  Life will never end because dammit I won't let it.  I'm thankful that I have God backing me up on this one.  Check it out~ it's God's will.  It's divine truth that man will never ever cease to breath in this universe for eternity.  PEACE + LOVE man

PREJUDICE? WHAT IS PREJUDICE? WE WERE MADE IN GOD'S IMAGE AS ONE.
HATE- BUT  I SAY TO YOU, LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, BLESS THOSE WHO CURSE YOU,DO GOOD TO THOSE WHO HATE YOU, AND PRAY FOR THOSE WHO SPITEFULLY USE YOU AND PERSECUTE YOU. MATTHEW 5:44

 PEACE,LOVE HAPPINESS AND BLESSINGS,
  FELICIA AKA FELINE (ZULU QUEEN LOS ANGELES CHAPTER)

CALVIN WHITE