Speaking about bad ideas...atheism and race!

[alias_sqbr]

Note: I am posting links to two posts in anti-racist communities. Keep in mind that the assumption is that readers are familiar and agree with anti-racist ideas so they're not explained or excused, and I'd rather you reply here unless you genuinely mean to join them (in which case, as always, read the userinfo first!) Also, as I say in the first

Comments

[loic]

Well, I try to draw the line between race and religion. They're both social constructs, but they tend to get confused a bit. When we throw in language groups people who aren't thinking about the issues really get confused - especially when we talk about the middle east (eg: what's an "Arab").

I tend to lump all religions together as far as belief in irrational things goes (who cares if it's Allah, virgin birth, thetans, chosen people or manifest destiny). People like to believe crazy shit that was made up in a long-ago time. That's fine. I guess. Some people are into Star Trek too.

Cultural behavior is a different manner. I think that FGM is unacceptable, regardless if it's practiced by Muslims, Jews or Christians - it's a North African practice. The death penalty for crimes is unacceptable regardless of if it's justified by religious excuses or not. I think these practices are bad and wrong, but that's not because of my position as an atheist or the Christian heritage of my values system (directly), but because of my European heritage. I am judging other cultures to be worse. I can't help it. I'm sure many people of other cultures judge mine too - with surely as valid reasons. But religion isn't the issue here.

[loic]

Uh, most Muslims aren't arabs- they are Indonesian. Heck, most Christians are Latin Americans.

Racism is simply factually wrong.

As for culturally intolerant... uh, yeah, I am. It comes out of believing that morality is universal. As such there are a ton of cultural practices I have to simply say are wrong.

[loic]

Well, most Muslims aren't Indonesian, but most Muslims aren't Arabs and Indonesia has the largest Muslim population.

[kadeton]

Where are you drawing the line? Religion and culture strongly influence each other - when different cultural groups practice the 'same' religion, they tend to do it differently. Cultural grouping and genetic similarity have an even stronger relation. Doesn't the 'line' get extremely blurry along the way?

[loic]

The line can get blurry, but I don't think it's religion that makes me racist, I think it's having different cultural values.

[alias_sqbr]

Heh. My first attempt at replying to your comment got so tl;dr it became three separate posts, but I will try to be succinct, for more extended arguments see those posts :D

See, I agree that it's wrong to say "muslim" when you mean "middle eastern" and vice versa, because the two are not the same. But given that people often say "muslim" as code for being racist/culturally intolerant of middle eastern people (which makes no sense, but they do it anyway) etc I think that if you're going to look at racism you have to look at religious intolerance too. It is important to be precise, which is something I totally and utterly suck at :)

Anyway, as I said in my tl;dr post I do think it's totally ok to be against the death penalty etc, but it's the way people talk about it that bothers me: not considering the context or complexity of changing things and making blanket condemnations of entire cultures/countries based on very limited and distorted information. There's a difference between
"I don't understand why more americans aren't opposed to the death penalty" and
"All saudi Arabians are a bunch of ignorant savages who enjoy killing people for no reason"

[loic]

Yeah, I think I'm probably a bit racist. Or culturist or whatever. But I think that I'm at least (trying) to be selfaware about it. People who support the death penalty scare the fuck out of me.

[alias_sqbr]

Awareness is the first step :)

I find the double standard australians have about the death penalty pretty annoying. I can understand a stance of "I'm against it in general but given that Indonesia has the death penalty anyway, and we know they're guilty, think it's the right thing in this particular case" but that's not the vibe I get :/