So, limiting ourselves to the US, we should find that white racism is positively reactionary in every case. Conversely, anti"White" racism is not reactionary, except negatively so in the case of working class whites (not "white working class" so don't jump on me :-) "Other racisms" are negatively reactionary to the extent that they divide the working class, or pit middle class ethnicities against one another or against other working class ethnicities.
In California, further, we'll find that the "Black - Asian" equation is not quite so simple. Here in Oakland (and in SF and LA as well) there are substantial middle class African-American communities living right along side _working class_ Asian neighborhoods. I know, I live right smack dab in the middle of one. The Asian population has grown very rapidly here in California. As a result it is incorrect to say Asians as an _ethnicity_ are "privileged" (and therefore inter Black-Asian racism is generally nonequivalent). You really do have to pick through who the Black person is or who the Asian person is on a case by case basis. For example, the most conservative political figure in Oakland is an African American, Shannon Reeves (NAACP, Republican Party), while another African American, Ward Connerly, led the charge against affirmative action at UC. These are not isolated cases, but reflect a conservative trend from out of a _privileged_ African-American middle class, itself the product of an extreme class polarization within the African - American community. On the other hand, the one conservative Asian politician in Oakland, Henry Chan, had to jump ship to the Democrats as local Asian community opinion turned sharply against the Republicans in the wake of the orgy of China-bashing of Clinton/Gore in connection with the Leuong/Buddhist temple scandals.
But the Asian immigration is still heavily weighted with the commercial/capitalist diaspora largely from Hong Kong / Taiwan (and India). In cases such as the UC Berkeley student body (heavily diaspora middle class Asian / almost no Blacks), inter Asian-Black racism is _not_ equivalent. But on the other hand, this Asian middle class is considerably "ghettoized" (I recommend a tour of Milpitas sometime, or a visit to the all-China shopping malls) and will never advance to the "honorary white" status of American Jews. It is this that qualifies them as the true "Jews" of America.
Japanese society, of course, is famously xenophobic, let alone racist.
-Brad Mayer Oakland, CA
At 05:36 PM 3/22/01 -0500, you wrote:
>I _specifically_ excepted black hatred of whites, which I regard as not
>unreasonable, although unfortunate. I think it's racism, though, when
>Asians--today a privileged group, though not historically, and of course not
>all Asians--hate blacks. Or when Jews do. Bear in mind, when my Jewish
>ancestors came to this country, Jews weren't white. In Japan, anti-black
>racism is fairly ferious; also anti-Chinese and anti-Korean racism. (Right.
>Yoshie?)
>
>I agree, of course, that in America, anti-black racism by whites is the
>benchmark of other racisms. But you seem to think that is an objection to
>having a term to pick it out, to distinguish it from other racisms. I find
>that puzzling.
>
>- --jks