Racism

Exactly, grey. It's trying to show that the word can't hurt any more if the people at whom it's aimed by ignorant others hear them using it to each other. But I think I'll leave it up to those concerned to decide if they've sent the joke back long enough - I'd hate any more nannying whereby they were then prosecuted for using it in the context they intend!

Hell's teeth, just how complicated can we humans make ourselves, during this tiny blip of time alive?
 
Discrimination and prejudice comes in many forms DO, but don't make the mistake of thinking that you're being racially discriminated against because of your religion. You're not. You'll remember the Governments trevails in bringing in a religious discrimination law recently, had race discrimination covered this as being the same entity they needn't have bothered. Because they were different things, the Government had to treat them so.

The colour of one's skin (and hence race is something that is unavoidable (unless you're Michael Jackson). If you choose to adopt a religion however (regardless of which regretable denomination it is) that's a matter of your choice (though in many cases it's programmed into participants at an early age) so the sense of choice is questionable if it appears as indoctrination. In other words one group is penalised for something over which they have absolutely no control, whilst the other is penalised for something which they have willingly bought into. That's not to say one's innocent and the others less so, but there is an element of choice involved in the latter.

You might say they all come under the banner of intolerance, and to some extent that's true, but it's still a different thing, and in any case, I'm struggling to think of any broad brush area of life that has done more to promote and perpetuate intolerance than organised religion. The only thing I can possibly compare it to in a historical context would be extreme nationalism, which is capable of whipping the same levels of hatered.

I seem to recall a case being brought of racial discrimination in Scotland a few years ago by an Englishman. He lost.

There is a kind of grey area emerging that involves 'ethnic minority groups' and 'race'. The former definition allows many more distinctions to be made, and it is this that has allowed 'Irish' and 'other white European' to become classified. My experience of these however, is that they're used predominantly for monitoring employment practices etc Though I was involved in push a case successfully that played a race card involving an Eastern European angle.

So to put it bluntly........


You're religion is not your race. It's really that straight forward. Don't think that you're the subject of racism because of your religion.
 
Warbler, that's all just semantics.

When you're having the ###### beaten out of you because of your name, when you can't get a council house because of the religion of the family into which you were born, and when you're having bags of urine thrown at you because of the school you go to, it really doesn't matter whether it's because the perpetrators hate you because of your colour or your religion. Racism, sectarianism, it doesn't matter what it's classed as - it all comes from the same place.
 
No-one denies it doesn't all come from sectarian hatred or discriminatory practice, Gareth. But if one's to have a sensible discussion about RACISM, which is the topic to hand, it's important to understand exactly what that is. It is NOT about, for the nth time, one's religion or even one's lack of religion. I can't remember all of the precise breakdowns by racial character, but any anthropologist would be able to tell you that they include negroid, caucasoid, Asian, Semitic, Mongoloid and the arctic peoples. Then there are sub-categories and sub-sub-categories, but by and large, those are the RACES of the world. Semites include Arabian peoples, Palestinians and Israelites. Mongoloids include, fairly obviously, Mongols and related tribal areas, such as Kazaks, with sub-categories including Turkmen, etc.

If we don't understand the first thing about what constitutes a RACE of people, then how the hell can we understand the question, let alone the answer?

History is fully littered with one type of people believing themselves superior to another. Their religious persuasion usually had little to do with the invasions and wars they engaged in, although once Christianity had established itself and began its own internal persecutions, it was all right for, as an example, Roman Catholic administrators in the Belgian Congo under Leopold II to start reducing the two main Congolese tribes to oppressed and oppressor, under a system of fake eugenics, later modelled by Hitler in his murder of the Jews and 'imbeciles'. Immense brutalities were meted out to one tribe by the other, for the Belgians and with their express command and approval, to boost rubber-tapping and Belgium's wealth. Once you demonize the 'other' because of their race, or within a race because of tribal differences, you can sanction whatever you like against them.

Chuck in the icing of religion, with, in the Belgian Congo's case, Catholicism as far superior to Animism (in the Church's eyes) and you can doubly start deleting those dreadful, inferior, creatures.
 
The colour of one's skin (and hence race is something that is unavoidable (unless you're Michael Jackson). If you choose to adopt a religion however (regardless of which regretable denomination it is) that's a matter of your choice
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That is just too simplistic, Warbler. No child chooses to be born into a religion and yet, from the start, in many places they will be classed according to the religion of their forebears, whatever persuasion they may choose to adopt as they grow older.

You cannot easily separate racism and sectarianism. In many cases the two are inextricably linked - and, as Gareth points out, no matter what fancy word is used to describe the discrimination, it remains just that and the outcome of it is the same.
 
Indeed, Betsmate.

Having thought more about Kri's post, can you define racism by simply using anthropology? No - that is too simplistic. Racism is also about culture, which can differ markedly across an anthropological group. An element of culture is religion ...
 
Elements of culture are also head-hunting, cannibalism, ritual scarification, painting one's naked body with mud and spending 40 days in the wilderness, male circumcision, female circumcision, neck-stretching, plate lips, filed teeth, wearing penile gourds, tattooing, polygamy, drinking fresh blood from cows, marrying one's first cousin, to name but a few interesting diversions from life in Notting Hill, Muttley, but they're nothing to do with religion.

Of course there are all sorts of traditions within racial groups which contribute to the 'culture' of that group or its sub-groups, but you must keep religion at bay and NOT keep trying to confuse it with RACE.

There are plenty of races who don't (or didn't) have a recognised religion but a system of animistic beliefs based on the spirits of trees, clouds, animals, reptiles and birds. For example, Africans: their beliefs were animistic until Christian explorers came crashing through their jungles to teach them how wrong they were and that Kalulu, the sacred hare, could no more save their souls than stop the Sun in the sky. Africans didn't need Christianity, but the Christians needed souls to save, so they began evangelising the animists and convincing them to change over to their way. Which is why you still have, today, a rather uneasy categorisation of many sub-Saharan African countries as Christian/Animist. If you think of the major colonising countries in Africa, they're British, French, German, Italian, Belgian and Spanish, with the Arab traders/slavers influencing coastal countries with Islam. So you already have C of E, Catholicism, Lutheranism, and Islam all trying to replace the animist beliefs of the different indigenous tribes (although all those tribes would come under the anthropological term 'negroid').

Same with Arabs: an Arab can be a Coptic Christian Egyptian or Lebanese, a Muslim Kuwaiti. So race, per se, doesn't adopt one particular religion: in some areas one is much more prevalent than another, but because one is of a certain race certainly doesn't follow that one is of a certain religion. That's why you must be very careful when trying to drag religion into a discussion on race. The Inuit didn't have a formal religion until beset by earnest Christians, neither did the Tongans or the Solomon Islanders and a whole host of pagan or animist races round the world.

There is DISCRIMINATION, INTOLERANCE, HATRED, and CRUELTY in religious divides, but by no means does it follow that there are differences in the engaged races. You only have to look at how the Protestant and Catholic Christians have torn each other to pieces over the centuries, but are both primarily Caucasian. There are divisions between religions, yes, but it's also the divisions WITHIN religions that make for so much mischief.
 
Confusing isn't it. I always thought it an offensive word until Pulp Fiction. The word 'coloured' has had a similarly colourful career if you'll pardon the pun. When I was at school we studied American History - the N.A.A.C.P. (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) championed the cause of black people but use of such a word in the Big Brother house would no doubt lead to eviction. I feel sorry for the dumb bird in question (if I can call her a bird without offending anyone).
 
No you can't - I am offended!!!!!! Who do you think you are, calling a female a bird?? Eh??? You'd better hope you're not on a racecourse soon when I am, matey boy!!!!!
 
Matey Boy? Are you implying that I use children's bubblebath and dress like a sailor? See you in court!
 
Eh - I'll have you know that I was denied the pleasures of Matey bubble bath as a child, due to being allergic to the stuff! cry

No comment on the way you dress!!!!!
 
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