Reverse Racism

Matthew Yglesias (Think Progress) explains why this Republican phrasing makes no sense:

Rush Limbaugh thinks Sonia Sotomayor is a “hack” and worse, “Here you have a racist — you might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist.”

This seems very confused. Being a “reverse racist” can’t be similar to being a “racist,” it needs to be the reverse of being a racist. Limbaugh clearly just thinks Sotomayor is a racist. She hates white people. For a Latina to hate white people isn’t “reverse” racism, it’s racism. Reverse racism would be if you had a white person who hates white people. It would be like racism, where you hate people of other races, but in reverse.