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

[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

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, but that perception still has to be tied to race (biological differences), otherwise it wouldn't be racism. An Australian Christian of middle-Eastern descent, for example, seems more likely to encounter racial prejudice in Australia than a white Muslim (correct me if I'm wrong!)... while the prejudice is based on cultural differences, those differences don't necessarily exist. They're just part of a package which associates "middle-Eastern" with "Muslim" (and "Arab"). The assumption that everyone of a particular race is of a particular culture is what links a sense of cultural superiority to racism.

Just to clarify, that isn't to say that prejudice against people of other cultures is okay. The assumption that everyone of a given culture has the same views and opinions is prejudice: assuming you know something about a person given no evidence. Once you have evidence that an individual supports ideas or actions that you consider ethically (or, I guess, morally) wrong, it's no longer prejudice; it's just a judgement.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

THAT IS NOT A CLARIFICATION POST THAT IS YOU RAMBLING AND MAKING THE ISSUE MORE COMPLICATED THAN IT NEEDS TO BE.

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

Should say New racism: about cultural prejudice, along ethnic lines. I.e. Saying "all those bloody muslims are too different to fit in, with us Aussies." When talking about middle-eastern migration.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

And yes while it is a simplification, everything you've been saying, is just that, with added words.

(Okay now that I've started arguing this, while he's offline and yelling back answers, I'm going to stop).

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

Okay, less rambly version:

There are people who are culturally European but are not white. There are also people who are white but not culturally European. The first group is more likely to encounter racial discrimination in European culture than the second.

Clearly the issue of an individual's cultural background is not important. Instead, it is the view that people who are biologically different must be culturally different that makes it racism.

[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

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

At work at the moment, so I'll check it out later. My point was that thinking that Muslims are all crazy isn't racism, it's religious intolerance. The usual atheist perspective is that people who are devoutly religious are either crazy or stupid, regardless of their race or culture... and I don't think that can ever really be separated from atheism, since one of its central tenets is that all religions are false.

I maintain that there is a difference between religious intolerance and racism, because religion and culture are not the same thing (though they have strong ties). If Harris' problem is with Islam as a whole, then that transcends culture. If he only has a problem with middle-Eastern Muslims, then yes, he is racist, but it isn't his opinion on Islam that makes him so.

Nobody but me thinks semantics are important. :(

[i-palimpsest.livejournal.com]

I'm an athiest but I don't think religious people are stupid or crazy.

More mistaken or mislead. . . and really as long as their religion doesn't hurt me or anyone else it's none of my business.

However I think that blowing yourself up in the name of anything at all is both crazy and stupid. (lets face it that's one attack on whatever it is your against, whereas if you blow something else up you can do more than one attack)

In the case of muslim suicide bombers they justify it through and because of religion. . . but I'd think they were just as crazy if they were blowing themselves up for anything else.

[alias_sqbr]

People have been martyring themselves since the year dot, and while I'm not in favour of it it's not a completely stupid gambit, since people remember martyrs, and whether or not it makes any sense tend to see them more sympathetically(*). Look at the feminists who threw themselves in front of horses, or went on hunger strikes etc.

(*)Suicide bombers may not get much sympathy here, but I get the feeling they do in the middle east, which is where they're trying to make an impression

[alias_sqbr]

The thing is, people use words as code. He says "muslim" but he means middle eastern. It's like when people here say "immigrants" they don't usually mean the ones from England and new zealand. When americans talk about "hip hop culture" they mean african americans, even though most people who listen to hip-hop are white.

Now that doesn't mean it's ok to assume that's what people mean when they say "muslim", "immigrant" etc, you have to look at how the words are being used and point out the subtext.

Also, while atheists are obviously going to have a lower opinion of religious people than of ourselves, I strongly disagree that we are justified in thinking they're all crazy, since most of the world (and any given country) is religious and no more crazy (on average) than we are. We can think they're wrong/deluded etc about that one thing but that's different from dismissing them and their opinions in general. And since most religious people are, quite obviously, not insanely violent, dismissing an insanely violent persons actions as "just the inevitable result of religion" is nonsensical.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

"It's like when people here say "immigrants" they don't usually mean the ones from England and new zealand."

And definitely not those Catholic Youth who have overstayed their visas.

[alias_sqbr]

Well obviously, that's completely different!