Bratislav MISIC Year10 Religious Studies Coursework Island School
Racism is hostility and discrimination shown towards other people simply because of their color, nationality, racial characteristics, cultural differences, etc. This arises out of the idea that some races are superior to others. This idea was and is often promoted only for personal profit by individuals, sometimes for political profit (Nazi Germany), and sometimes for economic reasons (slavery).
The stereotypical situation we tend to think of in recent times is one where white
Americans hate black Americans.
Racism is often a product of power and prejudice. When one has the ability, the power, to put one’s prejudiced idea into practice racism is born.
We must not confuse racism with prejudice. Prejudice, in this case based on race, is simply a thought, a grudge one human bears for a whole race for no reason. Based on these vague ideas and expectations he feels that all members of that race are the same, and usually that means they are all bad for one reason or another.
Racism is when the individual, or a group of individuals discriminates against a whole race, and even shows violence.
Racism usually arises out of the following situation. Let us imagine a society where the system is indifferent to anyone and many racial groups live together. The Hosts ethnic group has always been in that country, and the Guests ethnic group has immigrated recently, for economic purposes or to escape religious prosecution.
This group lives in their own small communities throughout the country. They work hard, help each-other and prosper. They choose to segregate themselves from the
Guests in order to preserve their culture. Since they know how to appreciate their position more than the Guests, they work harder and on average they have a better standard of living. Only the richest Guests leave their small communities and join the
Hosts’ society. To an average Host the average Guest looks to be considerably better off than himself.
Therefore unsuccessful Hosts tend to blame their problems on the Guests. These are all long term causes for a situation where the Hosts go on an all-out anti-Guest campaign which is usually extremely violent. There are two possible short-term causes. The first one lies with the Hosts. Economic troubles or political instability.
This leads to power struggles and gives rise to extremists. With simple political maneuvering they focus the anger of the more powerful Hosts to the Guests, who are going through the same troubles. Many ordinary Host are disillusioned about their situation and they often hate the Guests. An example of this is Germany 1929 to 1945.
The second short-term cause is the fault of the Guests. If they are immigrants from neighboring countries they may well occupy whole regions of the Host country. This leads them to desire independence, and sometimes they will resort to violence to obtain it. The Hosts have no choice but to answer with force, and this is, like the first cause, interpreted as racism. An example of this is Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Racism is very often a product of hate, not the cause of it. Many of us may well dislike other people, and we tend to look at those people and find things about them that we can use to harm them. For example, if one of us hates someone who is, say,
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Bratislav MISIC Year10 Religious Studies Coursework Island School fat, it isn't the reason they hate the person, but it adds to the hate. Racism functions on the same principle.
Racism is also the product of the weakness of the human mind. We simply have a need to generalize things around us. An example of this are stereotypes. We can’t afford to give everyone around us an equal chance, and sometimes we need to judge people quickly. Racism consists of this only partially, because it requires energy and willpower. Many of us may bear grudges against other races, but very few will actually resort to using violence against literally anyone who belongs to the race we dislike. It is this energy that is crucial. Often people have too much energy, too many problems, and simply need to somehow use their energy. In the example of Nazi
Germany we see how the anger, the energy of one people can be focused acutely against another, simply to ventilate this anger.
Throughout history we have had various examples of racism, and every single one was for a reason other than “racial superiority”.
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Hebrews worked as slaves in Egypt. They were needed to build buildings, roads and various other structures.
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African-Americans were used as slaves in the US because they worked only for food and no personal profit, providing a cheap labor force.
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Slavs, Jews and gypsies were exterminated by the Germans because a scapegoat was needed for the disasters of Germany and because the people of that country needed inspiration (no matter how sick it was).
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The system of Apartheid in South Africa was a way of achieving political stability.
Racism can come in many different forms, but it usually comes because of traditional ideas about superiority. Many have tried to explain this, none more so than Darwin who believed in the survival of the fittest (social Darwinism), and Niezche who conceived the concept of “superman”.
In many parts of the Bible we are reminded of how all beings are created equally.
However, we never see the actual word, “racism” anywhere. This is because racism is a fairly recent concept. Before, hundreds of years ago, racism was practiced, but not as such. Then it wasn’t just mindless violence, but was a product of religious beliefs, and economic needs. Today racism has much less purpose than it did in time of Jesus, so we can’t really tell what he would have said about today’s racism.
We do know that Jesus certainly never favored some people to others because of their race. The all too famous story of the good Samaritan is a reminder of how Jesus never discriminated against other groups. Jesus in fact encouraged interactivity between races. We know all this from the fourth book of John, and the seventh book of Luke
(verses 23 to 28).
Peter is the most direct one when it comes to racism. He says that God treats all men on the same basis … no matter what race he belongs to . There is a catch to all of this, and it is the fact that God will treat all men equally if they worship him . This basically means that God isn’t racist, but this is only good for Christians. If you are not a Christian, you can expect to be discriminated against by Christians and God.
This is featured in Acts 10, 1:30.
In Galatians 3:28 it is said that you are all in one union with Christ Jesus . However here it also says that there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles . This contradicts Paul, though not as much as is apparent. One might argue that here it is
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Bratislav MISIC Year10 Religious Studies Coursework Island School obvious that all men are equal to God. Unfortunately this theory is incorrect because
Jews worship the same God as Christians do, only in a different fashion.
Perhaps the most practical Biblical teaching for our purposes is the Matthew’s Golden
Rule: Treat others as you would like them to treat you (Matthew 7:12).
In Acts 17:26 it is implied that all men who live on the Earth today originate from the same person, and that is Adam. If we are all ancestors from the same man than we are all related, no matter how distantly.
James (2:1) says show no partiality
. Again, we don’t know if this is aimed at
Christians only, or at everyone. In Colossians 3:11 it is mentioned that Christ is all, and in all . However the passage makes it clear that this is intended for those who worship one God (Greeks, Jews, uncircumcised, circumcised-Islam didn’t exist then).
All of these Christian beliefs tend to hinge that racism shouldn’t be practiced in
Christian societies. This is because God doesn’t care who worships Him, as long as they do, and this is understandable.
Many Christians since the beginnings of Christianity felt that all human beings were created equal. This mean that they, in theory, thought that people of all colors and more specifically races, were equal. However they tended to apply this philosophy only to fellow Christians. This is the problem itself – different races tend to be of different religions, so on the many occasions when Christians showed aggression towards non-Christians it was interpreted as racism.
Whenever Christians set out on crusades for example, they tended to kill many Jews throughout Europe until they reached their destination. Jews were not only of a different religion, but it was the popular belief that they killed Christ. They were seen as the mortal enemies of Christians. The problem here was, how do you know who’s a
Jew, and who isn’t? Not all Jews went to synagogues, or wore skull-caps. There was one imperfect way to tell a Jew, and that was by his/her racial characteristics. The stereotypical Jew has black hair, dark skin, and a sharp, long nose. And thus anyone who fit this description was killed, no matter what. This is a form of racism, though from a Christian perspective it wasn’t meant to be racism.
Many Christians today would say that racism is unacceptable. Many Christians fight against racism the most famous of which are Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South
Africa, and Dr. Martin Luther King from the USA.
The Catholic Church has taken an extremely politically-correct approach to racism. In its 1965 Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to non-Christians it proclaimed that any harassment because or religion, race was foreign to the mind of Christ.
Again, the Church failed to be more specific. It didn’t say for whom this was unacceptable, and for whom it wasn’t, if for anyone. One must remember that by this time the Church was well established and did not need to fear its position, unlike back the middle ages. This Declaration is basically the same as the Catechism of the
Catholic Church (1934-35), only phrased differently.
The World Council of Churches condemns racism as an assault on Christ’s values and a rejection of his sacrifice . Every Christian feels that racism is an absurd idea.
Many Christians however do not do anything about it.
Christians such as Martin Luther King respond to racism by peaceful protest. They feel that Christ never encouraged violence, so it shouldn’t be used to achieve anything.
Other Christians feel that they should respond to racism by violence. For example, the
Ku Klux Klan openly encourages racism and Christianity. They feel that the white
Christian people of America should unify against the racially impure foreigners. This
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Bratislav MISIC Year10 Religious Studies Coursework Island School view isn’t supported by almost any other Church. Some churches of Christianity support racism more than others. The more a Church is integrated into a society, the closer it is to the ordinary people’s beliefs. In these cases the church understands the people better. If these people are racist, the church may well be racist, though in a very slight way. Recently, and especially in Europe the Orthodox Church as well as some other more Catholic-related churches have began to stride to a nationalist note.
As we said before, no Church in the world will accept crude, barbaric, vulgar racism.
In fact, no racism is tolerated.
In many cases throughout history violence has been a response to racism. Christians strictly teach that violence should never, on no account, be used. This question is a very controversial one. If someone has shown racism towards you, should you fight back? Different Christians will say different things. If you strike back, you are being violent. If you strike back, you are showing hate towards a fellow man. This is unacceptable to many Christians. In fact, Jesus believed and taught that all men were born with a good heart, and it was the world around them that corrupted them outside, but their heart is still untouched. Based on this philosophy you shouldn’t really attack a fellow human, no matter what his crime is. You are simply putting yourself on his level if you strike back. Many Christians will say that to attack someone is to attack
God himself, because our bodies are temples of God.
Another Christian may say that if someone shows racism, they are rejecting the values and sacrifices of Jesus . Thus they have already committed a sin against God.
Isn’t it reasonable to defend the will of God and strike down all those who disobey his will?
Other Christians may say that only the Lord should decide, and we have no right to take the Law of God into our own hands. However these same Christians may also say that if you strike down someone for their crimes you are committing a crime just as bad.
Some Christians may respond to this by saying that someone who has committed a sin against God has become inferior automatically. In the Bible it is taught that God created man to rule over all other animals. The man who shows racism is as inferior as an animal. Therefore you may strike him down, because as a human God has empowered you to do so.
The other set of Christians will say this. If you think that another man is inferior because he has shown racism and disobeyed God, then you are quite obviously making a judgement only He can make, and you are disobeying Him. Using this philosophy, if you think that the man who thought you were inferior is inferior than you and him are sinners. This seems to fit in rather nicely with the general Christian philosophy that we are all sinners and as such shouldn’t be punished too harshly. In this view racism isn’t such a grave offense.
My view to this situation is that violence is an appropriate response to racism only in the very extreme cases. There is every argument against the use of violence. One argument would be that by using violence to counter racism you are putting yourself at the level of the person who is showing racism. Another argument is the famous one, “two wrongs don’t make a right”. The third argument, put forward by the Civil
Rights Movement in the USA, and by Gandhi’s Movement, is that if you show violence the person oppressing you will have a reason and justification to oppress you.
To the first argument I would say that there is no such thing as “putting yourself” at someone else’s level. We are all equal, as it says in the Bible. However, we are all
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Bratislav MISIC Year10 Religious Studies Coursework Island School humans, and I think that it is justifiable to take revenge, to respond to violence using violence, because I have as much right to show violence as any other man, especially the one who is being a racist.
To the second argument I would say that a wrong can be interpreted as a negative value. “Two wrongs” are presumably multiplied, because it is the oldest mathematical operation, and this produces a positive value, as opposed to a negative one, a wrong one. On the other hand, we can argue that when we say “two wrongs” we in fact mean adding, in which case it is absolutely true to say that two wrongs don’t make a right.
In fact, the only way we can get a positive value by adding something to a negative one, is if we add a positive value with a greater absolute value than the negative one.
This means that to counter a wrong we must not only do something right, but something that is more right than the thing that is wrong is wrong.
Therefore we are left with the third argument. It is the most practical of the three. I think it is a reasonable and just argument. However, the question facing us is “
IS violence an appropriate response’ not “
SHOULD violence be a response”.
I think that if someone has been racist to someone else, that person has the right, by all means, to deal back a violent blow. It is their right, just like breathing air.
However, I think that it is purely counter-productive. In fact, I believe that a person who responds to racism with violence might as well be provoking it, and therefore violence shouldn’t be the response. On other hand, I think we should have in mind that it is in human nature to respond harshly sometimes if we are provoked, and racism is certainly a provocation worthy of a violent response.
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