…This questions comes, indirectly, from my father who upon watching some brouhaha on the news awhile back, replied with; “‘White Supremists’…‘Black Supremists’…I wonder if there are any groups of people who think that their own race is inferior to all others?”
For some reason, that question has stuck with me…but aside from seeing a “Jerry Springer” clip showing a black guy proudly(?) carrying a Nazi flag into the studio, I’ve never come close to finding an answer. (Mostly because my research has been really half-assed, but that’s another story)
So…can anyone enlighten me? Are there indeed groups of militants who carry around “We SUCK!” banners at rallies?
Not in the way you’re presenting it, but yes, because a “supremacist” is actually displaying his own inferiority. People with a “superiority” complex are really trying to compensate for their own insecurities; a person with a healthy self-image doesn’t rely on other people’s alleged inferiority in order to feel good about himself. So **every **racist banner is actually saying, “We suck!”
I’ve heard of Jewish Nazi skinheads before…(see the movie ‘The Believer’ which is loosely based on a true story). A friend told me he met a white power skinhead who just happened to be black. I’ve met a white guy who thinks white people suck.
I don’t really know of any organized group of ‘inferiorists’…usually just isolated cases.
Well – for one – this problem isn’t just black and white.
Secondly, nobody who genuinely feels inferior would militantly parade that fact. If anything, they would take desperate measures to change their ethnicity by adopting ethnic features, traits, fashions and habits associated with another ethnic group-- to the consternation of anyone in their ethnic group around them. Witness young white suburbanites overly enthralled with hip-hop culture, Black people who bleach their skin, Asians who have surgical procedures done to “correct” their epicanthal folds, Jews who still try and hide their ethnicity by Anglicizing their names and denying their religious roots.
There may be sizeable numbers of self-loathing blacks, whites and others who shun their heritage and backgrounds, but they are not organized. I have heard anecdotes of liberal whites guiltily brutalizing themselves for racial misdeeds of other whites. I even seem to recall a JET magazine publishing a mid-80s article about a black man wanting to join the KKK. John Leguizamo did a hilarious bit about about a Latino “crossing over” as a Japanese businessman in his concert film, Mambo Mouth.
So… groups? No. Oddball self-loathing individuals or opportunists? Sure.
That said, maybe someone else can shed light on the so-called “Japanese inferiority complex” I’ve heard about…