Can the oppressed become the oppressor?

There has been much talk lately about racism, and what it is.

There are two views of racism, that it is the manifestation of prejudice held within the heart of an individual, or that it is a societal thing, embedded in our institutions. Examples of the first is an individual who shouts offensive comments at a minority person from a car window. The judgement passed on London's Metropolitan police by the infamous McPherson report give ample demonstration of the second.

It is possible to believe think that both forms exist.

There is, though, the opinion that people from an oppressed minority cannot be racist. In fact, the word minority there is redundant. Who could argue that Black South Africans although a majority, were not oppressed?

So, it is argued, that the oppressed cannot be racist.

Women cannot be sexist.

People argue this from both sides. I think any reasonable person would agree that it is white racism that poses the biggest problem for societies across the world, that macro, institutional racism is white

Does that really mean a black person cannot be racist?

I believe that the human race is one big family. And that those who try to divide on lines of race are racist. Tribalism is a basic human instinct. It can be channelled for good, in which case we call it loyalty, or bad, and be called prejudice.

To claim that a person cannot be subject to these basic instincts is to deny an aspect of our common humanity. It is, itself, racism.

In some ways oppression arises from oppression. It is not just that oppressed can become oppressor, so much as oppression begets oppression. As violence begets violence. Hutus and Tutsis oppress each other in a repeating cycle of revenge.

Perhaps anyone who thinks the oppressed can never become the oppressor should study the fate of Palestine.

This is not to say there is no such thing as institutional racism. But I do say institutions, and society, do not exist in and of themselves. They are in some way a collective formed from the individuals past and present. A society will not continue to be institutionally racist unless at least some members of the more powerful group are individually racist.

Furthermore, I believe the idea that society is institutionally organised to favour all white people over all people who are not white is to misunderstand how power is organised in our society. For sure white males predominant in the power structure. This does not mean the power structure exists to the benefit of all white males. Or to white people only. Winston Churchill could be defined as an ethnic minority. As could Ian Duncan Smith. Both were leaders of the British Conservative Party.

By many measures, in the UK, poor white males are the group with the worst life chances.

The power structures of the UK are not based around race any more than they are around gender, or around some combination of both. That would be to the advantage of far too large a group.

We are ruled by a much smaller elite. A new aristocracy.

There are white males who think they are on the 'inside'. They fool themselves. They are divided from potential comrades with whom their interests are shared. There are many people who vote against their own economic self interest.

The same goes when privately educated feminists implore poor women to support the agenda of elite females. Doctors and lawyers will benefit far more from free childcare than any cleaner.

This talk of society being a power structure built in favour of all whites, against blacks also divides the oppressed is racist because it divides along lines of race.

The people who promote this thinking are just like white males, they fall into two groups. The elite, and the bitches of the elite.