polite_gandalf wrote on Nov 30
th, 2015 at 12:58pm:
The fact that Islam and muslims are not racial entities doesn't mean that criticism of Islam and muslims can never be a form of racism Soren.
Quote:Racism against Muslim migrants to Europe, Australia and North America has shifted ground in the opposite direction, with biological racism's focus on skin-colour and physical difference being supplanted by cultural and religious racism. Although coded expressions of biological racism have maintained a background presence in both public and private discourse, and occasionally erupt at full strength, there is a broad consensus around the condemnation of openly expressed racism based on physical or alleged genetic difference.
However, racism based on cultural and/or religious difference continues to stigmatise many of the same individuals and communities who were once the target of biological racism. Muslims have provided a focal point in the transition in racialised language that has been variously described as a transition from "colour" to "cultural" racism, from "Old" to "New" racism, or as the (re)emergence of religious racism in the form of Islamophobia. While some acknowledge the "variation" between these different forms of racism, they also "emphasize how the two logics of racism exist side by side, and ... are both reproduced through a similar racialization process."
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2015/05/28/4244447.htmWhen we talk about racism, we are essentially talking about a process by which a distinct cultural or ethnic "out-group" becomes homogenised through negative stereotypes, and is constructed specifically to stand apart and be contrasted with the "ingroup" (the group the racist feels he belongs to). It is a very well documented social and cognitive phenomenon that we just happen to call "racism" - even though it is not strictly correct etymologically.
The Irish weren't a racial entity either, but they were continually subject to racism. No blacks, no dogs, no Irish.
Modern racism is more about class than anything else. As developed countries have outsourced their proletariat classes to the developing world, class has inextricably connected to race. "Country shoppers" are not so much despised for their race, but their willingness to rise above their station. The developed countries have become bastions of lower middle class exclusivity. The fear that they'll come in and take our jobs goes back to the birth of unionism in Australia - the original population surge that occurred in the mid 19th century during the gold rushes.
Modern racism is about keeping the darkies in their place. The inferior "culture" the old boy rails against is about class just as much as it's about race. The old boy has no problem with the tinted races as long as they're kept safely away from us.
And God forbid they should jump up and down and complain about being invaded - that's ingratitude.
The old boy will agree completely with this, he always does. He usually goes a step further and recommends a jolly good carpetbombing and a return to colonialism - white man's burden.
What the old boy fails to remember, time and time again, is that the tinted races kicked the colonialists out.