FesteringZit is a creationist, so maybe he's less afraid of getting right to the heart of stupidity than most.

Need him to breathe life back into the ID discussion! Am interested to have a spirited discussion about this.

Also, I assume we're all in agreement that "Muslim" isn't a race descriptor and that we can concede to the right that "racist" claims are out of place? I think islamaphobic/bigot claims are fair game FWIW.

I'll concede that if he concedes that calling it racist is in no way race-baiting or reverse racism.

And if he counters with:

Then I'd agree, and say the exact same thing applies when people object to Islamaphobia and call it racist.

The OP literally only makes sense as a complaint if you are one of those special snowflakes that believe being called racist is the biggest possible insult - way worse than actually saying offensive things.

Stereotyping brown skinned people based on where they pray sounds like prejudice of race and religion. It depends on if the critic is talking about appearances or theology when targeting Islam, Muslims, or conflating the two.

Yeah except not all Muslims are brown.

So if you're listening to some RWNJ make offensive, blanket statements about Muslims and jump to claims of racism you're out of line (IMO). I mean, it's essentially a semantic exercise, as clearly it's prejudiced and often involves the RWNJ advocating for some kind of awful discriminatory policy, but it's technically not racism.

There's one of two explanations here

1) Your interlocutor is actually suggesting that rather than your comments being directed against religion in a reasonable way, they are more likely motivated by prejudice against certain ethnicities which are more likely to hold those religious beliefs.

2) Your interlocutor is using the word "racism" as shorthand for "xenophobic" or "bigoted", as racism is kind of an exemplar of the more general phenomena.

Or possibly some combination of both. (1) doesn't conflate race and religion, it just is an accusation of disingenuousness. (2) is a semantic mistake but one where it's easy to understand what is meant. Based on your replies to other posts in the thread it seems you would support the idea that in an argument it's reasonable to overlook easily corrected semantic mistakes by an opponent if what they mean is obvious.

Then the thread title suggests that an accusation either of actual racism as in (1), or xenophobia as in (2), is always either race-baiting or "reverse racism". In calling it "reverse racism" you are implying the same kind of underlying motive that your hypothetical interlocutor was implying in calling anti-Islamic sentiment "racism" as in (1), so it seems like you can hardly complain about the accusation since you make it yourself. And calling it race baiting is just begging the question of the validity of the initial complaint of racism or xenophobia.

So it all seems rather silly. What matters, both for the one calling something racist or xenophobic, and the one talking about race-baiting or reverse racism, is the arguments about why any of those labels apply. There are demonstrably people with anti-Islamic attitudes who are clearly racist against middle-eastern ethnicities they associate with Islam. We saw this clearly after 9/11 when Punjabi sikhs are attacked as "terrorists". There are also clearly people whose anti-Islamic attitudes amount to an ignorant and unjustified xenophobia. So dismissing all complains as race-baiting and reverse racism is prima facie ridiculous. As would be dismissing all criticisms of Islam as racism or xenophobia. But you haven't offered any argument to support an assertion that "liberals" have the worst of arguments about which attitudes actually demonstrate prejudice.

I catch your drift.

However, that would be a likely place for racism to hide. So you may not want to preclude racism permanently, while leaving the possible implications and relationships such prejudice has with racism unmentioned.

Is it racism when a Sikh is harassed, abused, or murdered as mistaken for a Muslim? Seems enough like it to call it.

At some point I think it's a mistake to expect overly precise conceptual definitions. That precision neither exists nor is necessary to the way the concepts function, whether discussing individual prejudice or institutional and structural injustice.

We use words like "racism" and "racist" to denote what we believe are unjustifiable prejudices rooted in race, ethnicity, culture, and even religion since it's so closely associated with the first 3. If we want to say "xenophobia" as in a fear of that which is strange or unfamiliar is a better term, that's fine with me. Both white supremacist racial prejudice against Black people and xenophobia towards Sikhs seem to be motivated by similar psychological and sociological factors. The comparison is fairly obvious.

In any case, there are many examples of this specific kind of problem here: cf. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1751841.html

Oh definitely not. In fact, I'd surmise that cases like this usually involve racism to some extent, but at face value it's "unfair" to automatically assume racism based strictly on anti-Muslim rhetoric.

This is closer, though I suppose the identification error could often be made based on similar dress or other cultural indicators that aren't limited to complexion.

Again though, lots of benefit of the doubt being given here. In a vacuum, based strictly on anti-Muslim rhetoric, I'm saying racism shouldn't be the claim. But the good news is that there are plenty of other appropriate labels that are pretty undesirable (from the RWNJ's perspective) to choose from!

Relatable factoring:

http://www.theonion.com/article/man-...bou-17990?utm_

Of course it is. In racism terms it's exactly the same as if it was a Muslim.

The fact they are idiots as well is quite likely correlated but otherwise irrelevant.

Right. It would be more religious persecution.

Or just religious criticism ya know, something completely legit.

Of course it's not racism, because Islam is not a race.

You can call it xenophobia or bigotry, or whatever - but it's clearly
not racism.

Brilliant post, and exactly why the current race-baiting environment is so
dangerous.

Because these neighbors (who clearly aren't racist) were fearful of the
race-baiters falsely calling them racists, is they are wont to do, they
didn't report these Muslim terrorists - and 14 people died as a result.

How do you know the neighbors aren't racist? You still haven't clarified what the actual point of your OP was.

Is you will not done today?

Is this the argument you want to make?

"I may be a xenophobe and a bigot, but I'm no racist". As in, you really think this is beating those pesky liberals.

Or there is both out there. Ya know.

festeringZit is back! When are you going to answer my questions?

FWIW whether or not "muslim" is a race is contextual, and increasingly it is essentially a racial category and is treated as such, especially in the US and Europe. Of course, this is actually more the case with conservatives than liberals. Given the rhetoric and policy proposals forwarded by many of your party's standard bearers (Immigration controls, registration, etc.) we will probably need to formalize this more in the near future.


ETA: Of course, festeringZit will snap right back and deny this (while continuing to ignore my earlier question) because he is full of ****.

I confess to using racism as a term to cover all of this quite a lot. Unlike the other non-standard regarding intentions/motivations it's hard to see how it makes any important difference. Even so I do try to remember to say Islamophobia like all good nits.

Spoiler alert, the other "non-standard" stuff you spend the day chezzing around tone policing about are equally unimportant.

I still think that beat cop who asked me if I was joining AQ when he saw I was growing a beard a few months after 9/11 was racist. He definitely made an assumption about my appearance and was not making any sort of religious argument.