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Race traitor is a phrase that describes someone who is perceived to have betrayed their own race, primarily by other members of their race or ethnic group. People can be accused of betraying their race for many socio-political reasons, including miscegenation, cultural assimilation, internalized racism, supporting the interests of other racial groups, and neglecting the interests and welfare of their own racial group. Among racial minorities, the term "race traitor" is sometimes used to describe someone in a position of power that abandons or minimizes their racial identity in order to escape racial discrimination. Although derogatory, the phrase has been reclaimed by some left-wing activists seeking to abolish the whiteness theory, notably including the political journal of the same name.
Conservative black nationalist movements such as Hoteps often emphasize strict adherence to traditional religious and cultural aspects of black identity, including strong family structures and patriarchal gender roles. Any perceived deviance from these norms can be seen as a betrayal. When asked about the assassination of Malcolm X after his departure from the Nation of Islam, minister Louis Farrakhan stated:
Was Malcolm your traitor or ours? And if we dealt with him like a nation deals with a traitor, what the hell business is it of yours? A nation has to be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats.
In addition to bolstering antisemitism, Jews have been accused as betraying their community by propagating right-wing politics, desecrating halakha, and assimilating into non-Jewish culture. A Jew who marries a non-Jew or converts out of Judaism is sometimes mourned as dead, and intermarriage has been described by an Rafi Peretz as a "second Holocaust". Because of the history of Christian antisemitism, there is often a greater stigma surrounding Jews who choose to convert to Christianity, while other conversions or a Jewish atheism of religious affiliation are not considered taboo. Professor Stuart Charmé wrote that "To embrace the radioactive core of goyishness—Jesus—violates the final taboo of Jewishness.... Belief in Jesus as messiah is not simply a heretical Jewish belief, as it may have been in the first century, it has become the equivalent to an act of ethno-cultural suicide."
The term has been used by the Ku Klux Klan to describe white political opponents. It has also been reclaimed by activists, including Noel Ignatiev, John H. Garvey, and Mab Segrest.
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