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

[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.

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

I think there is also a factor of there are things we should not tolerate. These being things that cause harm. Obliviously these are culturally informed. And yes I believe that my values are superior - but then if I didn't - I wouldn't hold them.

For example - I don't tolerate cruelty to animals, slavery, murder. If tolerating another culture means I have to go hey; It's ok for YOU to do those things cause that's your value system. Then I don't tolerate that. however that doesnt' mean I automatically hate everyone or everything about that culture. Just that part of it.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, yes, while criticising other cultures has a lot of baggage and stuff that doesn't mean it's always wrong.