Speaking about bad ideas...atheism and race!

[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 post, please do not use this as a chance to snipe at other people's religious groups.

So a while ago I posted a post called How to reconcile anti-racism with atheism (or other religious belief) to debunkingwhite, and thought about posting it here since it's something I'm interested to discuss with other atheists but at the time didn't feel up to dealing with the discussion. But hey it's not like I have anything better to do at the moment...

I actually think Towards an Intersectionality of Atheism and Race is a better post on the subject, though :)


EDIT: So, being rambly, I conflated racism towards people of middle eastern descent with Islamaphobia and cultural intolerance. These are of course three separate things, albeit with a very high correlation coefficient (even though, as australians should be very aware, most muslims aren't from the middle east!) In general I think atheists tend to be less explicitly "I hate all brown people" racist and more culturally intolerant anyway.

Anyway, for those of you who are atheist: do you agree there's a racist subtext to a lot of atheist discussion? Sam Harris (a moderately well known author) is certainly quite annoyingly bigoted against muslims. Something I didn't mention in the post but which has struck me since is that while libertarian "yay individuality!" american-style atheists may focus on Islam as a symbol of Religious Dogma And Oppression, left wing european-style atheists can treat the jews as symbols of Evil Conniving Capitilism. And of course, when people talk disparagingly about "jews" and "muslims" there is pretty much always a racial subtext.

There was a woman at Femmeconne who insisted on seeing middle eastern women as helpless victims of their society who need to be saved by Brave Enlightened Feminists Who Know What's Best (supporting the local women's groups (who do exist!) in doing their own thing is just not as rewarding or something) The fact that colonialism has always painted itself as "helping the poor victims of uncivilised societies who don't know what's good for them" (and that pretty much every time a society uses this justification, it ends up oppressively and selfishly colonialist, see the "liberation" of Iraq) is something I think a lot of people don't like to admit.

Those of you who are not atheist, how do you deal with bigotry in your own religion? I know my christian and (secular) jewish relatives have complicated Issues with Islam, and the common protestant view of catholics as superstitious and exotically weird is pretty problematic (the whole "How do we stop them from breeding too much and taking over?" thing goes to a bad place pretty quickly)

Then of course there's the huge issues with mix-and-match religions appropriating bits of other cultures' religions without engaging with them deeply or giving anything back to those communities. But that's not something I feel qualified to talk about much since it's something I don't do (It's always much easier to critique behaviours you know you're innocent of yourself :D) But this post about Taoism was interesting.

Comments

[loic.livejournal.com]

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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.

</rant>

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

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?

[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"

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

I've never seen/thought of a link between atheism and racism.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, now you have! The internet is full of unexpected surprises :)

(Have you ever spent much time around organised groups of atheists? I found it really gave me new respect for religious people :/)

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

There was a woman at Femmeconne who insisted on seeing middle eastern women as helpless victims of their society who need to be saved by Brave Enlightened Feminists Who Know What's Best (supporting the local women's groups (who do exist!) in doing their own thing is just not as rewarding or something)

Can I use this as an example the next time someone asks me why I am anti-feminist? I know non-white, non-christian women and men who are turned away from feminism because of this attitude and my gut reaction was "Why the hell didn't anyone take her out the back and give her a fucking slapping?!?!?!"

The fact that colonialism has always painted itself as "helping the poor victims of uncivilised societies who don't know what's good for them" (and that pretty much every time a society uses this justification, it ends up oppressively and selfishly colonialist, see the "liberation" of Iraq) is something I think a lot of people don't like to admit.

Which continues today through international aid programs... I was talking to an old lecturer of mine about this, and commented "I've always been cynical of Australia's aid program, now that I've worked in it, even more so".

"Those of you who are not atheist, how do you deal with bigotry in your own religion?"

I'm going to use veganism as a belief system here, as like atheism it is based on rationality and can actually be backed up with science because my person theistic beliefs don't follow any particular doctrine (even though I'm a recovering Catholic- that guilt will always stay with you).

I have seen alot of debate/argument within the vegan community about being "culturally sensitive", some people argue that when travelling or in the home of a friend who is from a different cultural group it's ok to eat non vegan things lest you cause offence. I think that even if you are seen as being totally crazy you can still explain veganism in basic terms to people.

I've seen alot of views on things such as ritualistic animal slaughter which is framed in a racist context, rather than in a logical one (ie people from here do this and they suck inherently, rather than people who do this suck regardless of where they are from).

The other issue that comes up from time to time is people using culture/race as an excuse to eat animal products. This can be particular difficult if someone grows up with different attitudes towards animals. For example someone who is Hindu who lives in a farm in India has a totally different view on dairy and cow use/abuse than someone who grows up in urban Australia who is white and Christian. I think that this needs to be acknowledged, that there are differences not only in the way animals are used in different places but also that people come from a different understanding point to begin with.

[alias_sqbr]

Can I use this as an example the next time someone asks me why I am anti-feminist? I know non-white, non-christian women and men who are turned away from feminism because of this attitude and my gut reaction was "Why the hell didn't anyone take her out the back and give her a fucking slapping?!?!?!

ngggg...I'd rather you didn't, just because femconne is supposed to be a welcoming pace blah-de-blah and I would hate for people to feel like things they say are going to be used as foder against them etc. Unless you removed identifying details more (as I should have done I guess). I feel kind of bad for mentioning it here but it was such a good example...And people definitely didn't stand for it, I'm not saying everyone was super enlightened about race but on the whole people wouldn't let anything really egregious pass without comment (thus a step up from the unisfa room :/)

I'm going to use veganism as a belief system here, as like atheism it is based on rationality and can actually be backed up with science because my person theistic beliefs don't follow any particular doctrine

That was really interesting, thankyou.

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

I have never considered a link between atheism and racism. I also don't see Islam as a race. As mentioned above most muslims are not Arabic so obviously Islam tranceds race. I don't see anything wrong with saying that a particular cultural group does things I disagree with regardless of how large or small that group may be. Since this is based in behavioural patterns not racial aspects. For example; if you come from a culture where animal cruelty is ok- I am intolerant of that aspect of your culture; and I make no apologies for that.

For me the key is - does this behaviour cause harm.

I think part of the problem is we often use the same words for country, race and culture. For example French. A person may be racially French but brought up in another culture and not 'behave' in a French way.

[alias_sqbr]

See my post about cultural intolerance, I was REALLY ambiguous in my language in this post and comments like your made me think more about what I really meant.

So I agree ambiguous language does cause a lot of problems :)

I think..there are ways of criticising cultures which are ok, and ways which are intolerant. It depends a lot on the context.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

Anyway, for those of you who are atheist: do you agree there's a racist subtext to a lot of atheist discussion? Sam Harris (a moderately well known author) is certainly quite annoyingly bigoted against muslims.

Can I ask what the first sentence has to do with the second?

If you mean (using your example as a clue) that a lot of atheist discussion shows intolerance towards religious groups, I would say "Yes" and probably also "Duh", since atheism obviously opposes all religions.

If you mean that atheist discussion tends to show racism, i.e. a belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of groups of people with certain similar genetic characteristics, then I would say "Not in what I've read; they tend to focus on cultural differences and ignore superficial biological differences."

If you mean that atheist discussion tends to betray a sense of cultural superiority, I would agree, but I don't really have a problem with that. The actions of an individual can be judged according to a code of ethics, and by extension, a society can be judged on the basis of whether it promotes cultural practices that are considered ethically wrong. This only becomes a problem when it is presented as an objective truth rather than a subjective judgement.

However, there are huge mental links between race, culture and religion. "Arabic" is not the same as "Islamic", nor is it the same as "of middle-Eastern descent", but people often use the terms interchangeably. Race as a concept is firmly entrenched in the human psyche, and the tendency to bundle race, culture and religion into a single package (along with a whole bunch of negative traits to create a stereotype) or at least to confuse the three by using limited terminology, is a major problem when discussing these issues. Of course, it's also a very natural tendency, promoted over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution... but overriding instinctual behaviour in situations where it isn't useful is what intelligence is for.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

If you mean that atheist discussion tends to show racism, i.e. a belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of groups of people with certain similar genetic characteristics, then I would say "Not in what I've read; they tend to focus on cultural differences and ignore superficial biological differences."

Two kinds of racism honey.

Old: about biological prejudice

New: about cultural prejudice. So showing cultural prejudice is a kind of racism.

'new' racism tends to be what's causing a lot of the problems in australia at the moment, or at least is what people will admit to.

(Shorthand version of a lecture I sat through for TWO hours, and almost managed to stay awake for so people, correct me if I'm wrong here, I have to give a talk on this next Tuesday).

And of course you've got the brilliant thing that if any culture is steeped deeply in a religion, evangelical atheists are going to have a problem with it, therefore showing 'racist' tendencies. The sensible ones, probably less so, but discussions tend not to happen as often with them.

Guess what, arguing this with you counts as homework :D

[alias_sqbr]

Sam Harris isn't just critical of Islam, he's bigoted: Watch this clip of him saying suicide bombers are clearly just made crazy by their religion, rather than having any secular reason to be angry (Reza Aslan, the muslim he's debating, makes some really good points as well if you can bothered watching the whole debate)

But I think greteldragon has made my point better than I could, so I'll let you two duke it out :D

[loic.livejournal.com]

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 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.

</rant>

[(Anonymous)]

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.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

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?

[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"

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

I've never seen/thought of a link between atheism and racism.

[alias_sqbr]

Well, now you have! The internet is full of unexpected surprises :)

(Have you ever spent much time around organised groups of atheists? I found it really gave me new respect for religious people :/)

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

There was a woman at Femmeconne who insisted on seeing middle eastern women as helpless victims of their society who need to be saved by Brave Enlightened Feminists Who Know What's Best (supporting the local women's groups (who do exist!) in doing their own thing is just not as rewarding or something)

Can I use this as an example the next time someone asks me why I am anti-feminist? I know non-white, non-christian women and men who are turned away from feminism because of this attitude and my gut reaction was "Why the hell didn't anyone take her out the back and give her a fucking slapping?!?!?!"

The fact that colonialism has always painted itself as "helping the poor victims of uncivilised societies who don't know what's good for them" (and that pretty much every time a society uses this justification, it ends up oppressively and selfishly colonialist, see the "liberation" of Iraq) is something I think a lot of people don't like to admit.

Which continues today through international aid programs... I was talking to an old lecturer of mine about this, and commented "I've always been cynical of Australia's aid program, now that I've worked in it, even more so".

"Those of you who are not atheist, how do you deal with bigotry in your own religion?"

I'm going to use veganism as a belief system here, as like atheism it is based on rationality and can actually be backed up with science because my person theistic beliefs don't follow any particular doctrine (even though I'm a recovering Catholic- that guilt will always stay with you).

I have seen alot of debate/argument within the vegan community about being "culturally sensitive", some people argue that when travelling or in the home of a friend who is from a different cultural group it's ok to eat non vegan things lest you cause offence. I think that even if you are seen as being totally crazy you can still explain veganism in basic terms to people.

I've seen alot of views on things such as ritualistic animal slaughter which is framed in a racist context, rather than in a logical one (ie people from here do this and they suck inherently, rather than people who do this suck regardless of where they are from).

The other issue that comes up from time to time is people using culture/race as an excuse to eat animal products. This can be particular difficult if someone grows up with different attitudes towards animals. For example someone who is Hindu who lives in a farm in India has a totally different view on dairy and cow use/abuse than someone who grows up in urban Australia who is white and Christian. I think that this needs to be acknowledged, that there are differences not only in the way animals are used in different places but also that people come from a different understanding point to begin with.

[alias_sqbr]

Can I use this as an example the next time someone asks me why I am anti-feminist? I know non-white, non-christian women and men who are turned away from feminism because of this attitude and my gut reaction was "Why the hell didn't anyone take her out the back and give her a fucking slapping?!?!?!

ngggg...I'd rather you didn't, just because femconne is supposed to be a welcoming pace blah-de-blah and I would hate for people to feel like things they say are going to be used as foder against them etc. Unless you removed identifying details more (as I should have done I guess). I feel kind of bad for mentioning it here but it was such a good example...And people definitely didn't stand for it, I'm not saying everyone was super enlightened about race but on the whole people wouldn't let anything really egregious pass without comment (thus a step up from the unisfa room :/)

I'm going to use veganism as a belief system here, as like atheism it is based on rationality and can actually be backed up with science because my person theistic beliefs don't follow any particular doctrine

That was really interesting, thankyou.

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

I have never considered a link between atheism and racism. I also don't see Islam as a race. As mentioned above most muslims are not Arabic so obviously Islam tranceds race. I don't see anything wrong with saying that a particular cultural group does things I disagree with regardless of how large or small that group may be. Since this is based in behavioural patterns not racial aspects. For example; if you come from a culture where animal cruelty is ok- I am intolerant of that aspect of your culture; and I make no apologies for that.

For me the key is - does this behaviour cause harm.

I think part of the problem is we often use the same words for country, race and culture. For example French. A person may be racially French but brought up in another culture and not 'behave' in a French way.

[alias_sqbr]

See my post about cultural intolerance, I was REALLY ambiguous in my language in this post and comments like your made me think more about what I really meant.

So I agree ambiguous language does cause a lot of problems :)

I think..there are ways of criticising cultures which are ok, and ways which are intolerant. It depends a lot on the context.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

Anyway, for those of you who are atheist: do you agree there's a racist subtext to a lot of atheist discussion? Sam Harris (a moderately well known author) is certainly quite annoyingly bigoted against muslims.

Can I ask what the first sentence has to do with the second?

If you mean (using your example as a clue) that a lot of atheist discussion shows intolerance towards religious groups, I would say "Yes" and probably also "Duh", since atheism obviously opposes all religions.

If you mean that atheist discussion tends to show racism, i.e. a belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of groups of people with certain similar genetic characteristics, then I would say "Not in what I've read; they tend to focus on cultural differences and ignore superficial biological differences."

If you mean that atheist discussion tends to betray a sense of cultural superiority, I would agree, but I don't really have a problem with that. The actions of an individual can be judged according to a code of ethics, and by extension, a society can be judged on the basis of whether it promotes cultural practices that are considered ethically wrong. This only becomes a problem when it is presented as an objective truth rather than a subjective judgement.

However, there are huge mental links between race, culture and religion. "Arabic" is not the same as "Islamic", nor is it the same as "of middle-Eastern descent", but people often use the terms interchangeably. Race as a concept is firmly entrenched in the human psyche, and the tendency to bundle race, culture and religion into a single package (along with a whole bunch of negative traits to create a stereotype) or at least to confuse the three by using limited terminology, is a major problem when discussing these issues. Of course, it's also a very natural tendency, promoted over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution... but overriding instinctual behaviour in situations where it isn't useful is what intelligence is for.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

If you mean that atheist discussion tends to show racism, i.e. a belief in the inherent superiority or inferiority of groups of people with certain similar genetic characteristics, then I would say "Not in what I've read; they tend to focus on cultural differences and ignore superficial biological differences."

Two kinds of racism honey.

Old: about biological prejudice

New: about cultural prejudice. So showing cultural prejudice is a kind of racism.

'new' racism tends to be what's causing a lot of the problems in australia at the moment, or at least is what people will admit to.

(Shorthand version of a lecture I sat through for TWO hours, and almost managed to stay awake for so people, correct me if I'm wrong here, I have to give a talk on this next Tuesday).

And of course you've got the brilliant thing that if any culture is steeped deeply in a religion, evangelical atheists are going to have a problem with it, therefore showing 'racist' tendencies. The sensible ones, probably less so, but discussions tend not to happen as often with them.

Guess what, arguing this with you counts as homework :D