How About Religious Mild Dislike?
As I promised or threatened yesterday, more on the ‘attempt by various well meaning people to legislate religious hatred as a ground for prosecution on the same basis as racial hatred,’ as Meghnad Desai put it in The Independent. Desai also thinks it’s a bad idea. Good, that. Let’s hope many people think so and say so.
A secular tolerant democracy needs to get away from privileging religion as a mark of citizenship rather than giving it a special status. The Anglican Church needs to be disestablished and its privileges such as the Blasphemy Law removed. Human rights should adhere to one’s humanity regardless of special characteristics. In a truly equal society we will all be citizens protected under the law, regardless of our race, colour, gender. To progress to that state we need to reduce, not increase, divisions. We need to put equality in the public sphere as a top priority rather than enshrine separatenesses into our law.
Yes, and there’s more to it than that. Religion should not be protected the same way race and gender are, because religion is not a given, it’s not inherited. There seems to be a strange Lamarckian thinking going on here, that insists on thinking of religion and race as the same kind of thing. And that kind of thinking leads to a discouraging kind of identity-entrenchment if not identity-imprisonment – as if one is never allowed to escape from or simply leave or change the situation one is born to. But people aren’t born Muslims or Christians, they are raised as Muslims or Christians. The tensions between separateness and equality that Desai refers to, tensions between identity and universality, only get tenser if contingent, chosen, cognitive categories – religion, politics, systems of thought – are treated as part of our DNA.
Johann Hari makes a similar argument here. And a blogger I haven’t read before says what I’m always saying:
But religion must be protected, because it’s special, it’s spiritual, it’s precioussss. Why do we draw a ring around religion to prevent it being questioned? Because it wouldn’t last five minutes in a straight fight with logic and reason.
Precioussss indeed. And part of the problem with that of course is that the more people are told that their religion is precioussss and must not be criticised sharply, the more they believe it, and we get a nice self-reinforcing grievance-hugging circle going. Let’s not do that.
And Anthony’s post at Black Triangle informs us that Rowan Atkinson criticised this bright idea the first time it came up, after September 11.
Some of the criticism at the time came from comedians. The debate was started by Rowan Atkinson when he wrote a letter to The Times, saying he had spent “a substantial part of my career parodying religious figures from my own Christian background”. The Blackadder star was also responsible for a sketch in which footage of Muslim worshippers bowing in a mosque was accompanied with a voice-over stating “The search goes on for Ayatollah Khomeini’s contact lens.”
Now, how do we know whether Blunkett and the judges would think that was ‘sensible’ or not? Hmm? We don’t. So let’s not risk it, okay? Let’s let A Devil’s Chaplain and Why I Am not a Christian and Why I Am not a Muslim and, indeed, The Satanic Verses sit on the bookshelves in safety. Okay?
Presumably the question is whether we want members of a religious group to be protected by the general laws against things like incitement to violence or murder that cover, say, gay people, or a protection modelled on the incitement to racial hatred laws.
It is a bit crude to claim that the case is completely cut and dried, that religion is simply a belief system, and therefore not like race. Religion is more than just a belief system, it is also a social and cultural system (something I think Judaism nicely illustrates by sitting on the murky border bewteen race and religion).
That said, as the British Humanist association says, the crucial thing is to “distinguish between incitement to hatred of beliefs and incitement to hatred of individuals or groups who hold certain beliefs”. That is parody of rituals, and hatred of the often bigotted views that underly religions should not be criminalised. This is how it would differ from the old blasphemy laws, which seek to protect the religion and by extension the -religious- sensibilities of believers, we should be glad that proposals to -extend- the blasphemy law to other religions were never taken seriously! That said, it was once used to prosecute mediums.
The problem with extending the racial hatred law is that it refers to words, behaviour or written material that is threatening, abusive or -insulting-, with the intent to, or -is likely to under the circumstances-, stir up racial hatred. I’m a little concerned about a law that allows prosecution for insulting behaviour that is likely to stir up religious hatred under the circumstances – that seems a little loose, but I believe that any prosecution has to be approved by the Attorney General.
Of course, the next question is what about sexuality, gender, disablity etc. Still, I don’t think is a cut and dried as people like to make out.
Perhaps the answer is to define religion -within- the racial hatred legilsation in purely social and cultural terms. This way religious groups are subsumed under the racial hatred legislation as quasi-racial groups, rather than there being special religious hatred legislation.
Perhaps I am being organistic, decentralizing, or anthropromorphizing (yikes! what a construction!) but it strikes me again how much it seems that ideas/memes can create such elaborate defense mechanisms. A jellyfish toxin is nothing compared to the varied paralysis tools religion has come up with. Between the ‘faith’ defense, the nonquestioning clause for followers, the shapeshifting to acquire racial rights, there are a whole series of traits at work here. Now, one can say that all of these defenses were generated by human intellect and are thus products of human creation, but I daresay that they are not always consciously applied or arrived at. In the memesphere, an environment of thought simultaneously simulated by each mind (no Jung with my salad, though), these ideas seem to find each other and attach with, damn it, a biological will to survive.
My thanks for providing such fertile ground, OB, for crazy connections, and my apologies, everyone else, for voicing them when they are not entirely formed or germane.
As a last comment, it’s funny how we can talk about religion not being biologically ‘contingent’ and yet continue to talk about race – as if it meant something scientifically. It is a myth, perhaps handy for people who wish segregation of some sort, but until the actual onset of some speciation, it is not provable or measurable.
Mark
Personally I think all this talk about race not being ‘scientific’ is a misguided, but well intentioned, attempt by scientists to contribute to anti-racism.
Anyhow, race doesn’t need to be a -biological- construct, in fact it is irrelevant, race here is a social construct, racists don’t conduct genetic tests before they attack people, they simply look at their skin.
Funny, I actually put ‘race’ in quotation marks when I was writing the N&C, then felt I had to explain the qt marks in a parenthesis (since it was the religion category I was questioning, so it seemed confusing to question the other category too) which made it all become too involved and I was short of time – so I simply removed the quotation marks and left it at that – but with some irritation, because I agree with Mark, I do think ‘race’ is a rather silly category.
No, I don’t want members of a religious group to be protected against violence. I want everyone to be protected against violence. And I emphatically do want the right to disagree with religion and religions to be protected against lawsuits and/or criminal charges – protected in the sense that such suits and charges have no legal grounds.
If I achieve nothing more in my blogging life (which seems likely), I can always point back to my Butterflies and Wheels linkage with pride!
OB, presumably your position means that you either have to
a) also object to existing incitement to racial hatred legislation
or
b) come up with some special pleading in the case of racial groups for protection that gay people or members of a religious group shouldn’t also enjoy.
Racists do tend to pigeonhole people, yes, but that doesn’t make the concept of ‘race’ scientific. We do use the term a great deal, and I am pretty sure most people think (and are even taught) that race is a quantifiable, measurable quality like hardness, conductivity, age, or height. People do identify themselves and others using these pigeonholes and have for generations. If we are attempting to be precise, however, in making laws, or conducting studies, or even making points, ‘race’ is an indeterminate word that more in common with with phrenology than biology: it is fashionable nonsense.
Racism exists like Religion exists, built upon a useful fiction. I cannot deny the existence as a social construct,motive force or handy descriptor, but I can note that anything predicated upon race is not logical or scientific.
Mark
James – Nonsense, that looks like the start of a very interesting blog!
PM, Yes, I know. And I do have qualms about incitement to racial hatred legislation, and the qualms have gotten qualmier because of this religious law. I think I think the legislation should be universalist rather than particularist.
*blushes*
Mark, I have to disagree with you. Firstly I think you are just plain wrong about whether predicating a law on race is logical. As a social construct we should take race very seriously indeed. You can’t say that people aren’t racists because there is no such thing as race from a biological point of view, the biological point of view is quite irrelevant in this case. We don’t ask if there is such a thing as religion from a biological point of view because the question just doesn’t make any sense, what has confused the issue over race is that race exists as a concept in both the biological and the social domain – but these concepts are separable, undermining one doesn’t undermine the other.
As to whether race is meaningful from a biological point of view I suppose it depends what you mean really. On the one hand there has been a lot of genetic mixing between different groups of humans, particularly recently. Also, different racial groups, as currently defined by external physical characteristics, differ by relatively small amounts compared to the genetic variation between all humans within whatever population they are in. However there are important differences in the proportions of various alleles between different racial groups, morphological differences (such as those used to classify skeletons) and genetic analysis can divide current human groups up based on their genetic characteristics. Which is why medicine still strives to analyse the differential effects of drugs in different populations (although in the long term it will move towards individual genetic fingerprinting bypassing the concept of race).
None of this means that the categories aren’t pretty blurred around the edges (and becoming more and more so with time). But surely it is obvious that any group that is separated reproductively from another group has the potential to develop certain differences (which is the biological definition of race as a matter of fact). Strictly speaking you could make the argument that the level of blurring (gene flow between populations) is such that humans don’t quite qualify for different races – but this is a difficult and contentious semantic point and far from overwhelming refutation of the concept of race in human biology.
But whether or not race is a useful concept in describing human differences from a biological perspective, the point remains that people can and do use the concept of race to divide people up. They use it to refer to others and they use it to refer to themselves. The biological differences between Europeans and people from the Indian subcontinent are, I imagine, pretty small, mostly skin colour, but both groups of people classify themselves as being different racially.
And finally, I believe that the racial discrimination law is more broad than simply race, including categories like country of origin.
Oops, I meant incitement to racial hatred law.
“But surely it is obvious that any group that is separated reproductively from another group has the potential to develop certain differences (which is the biological definition of race as a matter of fact).”
Well, no, it’s not really obvious – for one thing because the meaning of various words in that sentence is itself far from obvious. ‘Certain differences’? What does that mean? And ‘separated reproductively’? What do you mean – separated socially? Or by an impassable physical barrier? Are there a lot of races that are separated that absolutely now? Not that I know of. And there is no ‘biological definition of race’. It’s just not a biological term; it’s a social description, and often a pretty vague one at that. Of course, people such as judges at dog shows pride themselves on detecting minute characteristics in individuals that make them better or worse, purer or less pure, members of a breed – but that doesn’t make the category biological. ‘Races’ can and do interbreed; there is (as far as I know) no human ‘race’ that cannot produce offspring with any other ‘race’, so how biological can the term really be?
You know, the various groups in the Balkans often had to ask which ‘ethnic’ group people belonged to before they could ethnically cleanse them. Same in Rwanda – not all Hutus look like the putative typical Hutu, nor do all Tutsis look like your basic Tutsi.
OB, really, there is such a thing as race in biology. Just don’t get it confused with the social definition of race. Of course nowadays people will call it a variety or subgroup or whatnot but in the past it was a subgroup of a given species which differed by some taxonomic criterion from others of that species. Of course different races, whether human or any other species can interbreed, that is why they are the same species.
And by separated reproductively I mean just that, that they tend not to interbreed for whatever reason, in humans, historically, that would be because they all lived miles away from each other.
By certain differences I just mean that there are certain genetic differences that allow the two groups to be distinguished.
And as for being obvious that there is a possibility for these differences to emerge because of reproductive isolation – yes it is obviously possible. That’s one of the ways that speciation happens so it must be possible to have an intermediate point.
No, as I pointed out, most races are no longer separated much anymore. Of course that has absolutely bugger all to do with whether they used to be separated in the past, and whether they were sufficiently separated to develop sufficient differences to be acceptably classified as different races. That, as I said, is a moot point, but to be moot it can’t be absolutely and unequivocally settled – which is what Mark implied.
As to Hutus and Tutsis, you are deliberately confusing the difference between the biological and social concepts of race. I have already said that they are entirely separable. In fact I made a very similar point with regards to Europeans and Indians.
There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be able to accept that, in a certain biological/genetic sense, there are different races of humans, that these racial differences are small but real, that these differences are mostly disappearing with increased interbreeding, that these races do not necessarily map onto social categories of race, but most importantly of all, that these differences are not important from a moral or social point of view because they are pretty small and inconsequential differences when we consider all the amazing characteristics of humans and the large variations between individuals even in the same racial group.
Of course you are perfectly entitled to conclude from the evidence that actually the interbreeding at the edges of groups means that there is really more of a continuum between ‘racial’ groups and that, therefore, it doesn’t really make sense to talk of different races really.
However, what is fashionable nonsense, is to say silly things like ‘science proves that there is no such thing as race’, because it doesn’t, because it is a lot more complicated than that. But it assuages our troubled little non-scientific liberal minds to say such things.
Well, you know what, my position seems to be similar to one put forward by Pinker, fancy that.
Here we go, first ‘biological dictionary’ on google:
Race
Members of the same species that can be differentiated by unique characteristics into various groups.
Race
People who are believed to belong to the same genetic stock; “some biologists doubt that there are important genetic differences between races of human beings”.
Race
(biology) a taxonomic group that is a division of a species; usually arises as a consequence of geographical isolation within a species.
http://tinyurl.com/4p2fz
Race: no such thing
by Paul R. Gross
Excellent points, PM, and clearly written. I actually agree with you on almost all of them, though I still maintain my position.
I hope I didn’t say ‘science proves that there is no such thing as race’ because it does no such thing. My point was that ‘race’ is an indistinct term, and not accurately measurable, and that it should not be used any place where preciseness or accuracy is important, for example, in scientific studies and legislation. I did not mean to imply that it had no value at all.
You cannot word a law or propose a study predicated on distinct (human) race that I will accept as viable. Certainly you can talk about sickle-cell anemia and lactose intolerance, two things linked to ancestral groups. There are even some surviving examples of relatively distinct geographical groups…but a term accurate in 2% of situations but ambiguous in 70% is, well, worthless. Perhaps if you wanted to define a new taxonomy of race based on quantifiable gene sets we could put this to rest.
I am not aware of any even remotely comprehensive taxonomic organization or guide for homo sapiens sapiens. Exactly what authority (surely not SI?) are you using to even state the entirety of what constitutes the races? How many races are there? If I am wrong, you should easily be able to answer this.
A rule of thumb is of great practical utility, but it is not science.
PM
“As to Hutus and Tutsis, you are deliberately confusing the difference between the biological and social concepts of race.”
No I’m not. That’s uncivil. I may be confused, but I’m not deliberately confusing things.
And I think you’re oversimplifying. I don’t necessarily deny that these differences (racial differences) are ‘real’ – but that’s a bit vague.
Surely you know that all this kind of thing is quite vexed? That, for instance, paleontologists are often quite unsure whether the ‘differences’ they find in skeletons are merely ‘differences’ among individuals, or markers for different species? I may be wrong, but I’m fairly sure that ‘race’ is not nearly as solid a concept in biology or anywhere else as ‘species’ is. It’s mushier, fuzzier, woollier, harder to quantify or predict or nail down.
“However, what is fashionable nonsense, is to say silly things like ‘science proves that there is no such thing as race'”
Who said that?
Take a deep breath, calm down, and try to argue with civility.
OB, the concept of race in biology would necessarily be more fuzzy than species – species is quite solidly defined as inability to interbreed, because race is a within species division it is, by necessity, harder to pin down (in fact species has to be one of the best defined taxonomic terms in biology). But contra “…there is no ‘biological definition of race’. It’s just not a biological term” race is still a biological term all the same. Which is not to say that biologists don’t argue about whether certain biological terms are meaningful, particularly in taxonomy (which is not my area of expertise).
Paleontologists may well find difficulty in knowing whether differences in skeletons reflect different species or individual variation (e.g. differences between infants and adults, males and females) but we don’t need to rely purely in physical anthropological measures within humans – we can look directly at genetics. The reason why they have difficulty with the species question is probably because it is pretty difficult to infer inability to interbreed from morphological features, whereas differences between groups and similarities within those groups can be inferred from morphological features to some extent.
> “However, what is fashionable
> nonsense, is to say silly things
> like ‘science proves that there is no > such thing as race'”
“Who said that?”
Well not -you- exactly, but many people, particularly what we might want to call the liberal intelligentsia. But by using the argument that race is not a biological term you are coming close to this argument – essentially trying to undermine a concept by an appeal to authority, and an appeal that happens to be wrong.
But I think the fundamental point is, whatever the case of whether race is or is not a useful term in human biology – it has very little relevance when considering the question of race in society, where race is only very loosly related to the biological concept.
“My point was that ‘race’ is an indistinct term, and not accurately measurable, and that it should not be used any place where preciseness or accuracy is important, for example, in scientific studies and legislation.”
As for science, this question actually hits very close to home in terms of relevance to what I study (not race I hasten to add). I don’t think race -needs- to be incredibly precisely defined because fuzzy categories that overlap (i.e. only differ statistically) are perfectly fine in science. So as I said before, in medicine different drugs are still (or should still be) tested in different ethnic groups to look for differences in efficacy and side-effects. Of course perceived race here is being used as a proxy for genetic background, and it is hardly a very good measure (cf. African Americans), but it still has some uses.
As for legislation, again, I reiterate that the legislation has nothing to say about race as a biological concept, only race as a social concept. Otherwise you’d have to do scientific studies to see if two groups of people were too closely related (or even indistinguishable), say Hutus and Tutsis, to count as two different races, and thus for them to be able to incite racial hatred against each other. The biological concept is just not useful here.
As I said before, and back to the original argument, the racial hatred legislation is based on the concept of identifiable national or ethnic groups. The identification needn’t be biological at all. This is especially obvious when we consider that the legislation also includes national origin which has nothing to do with biology whatsoever.
And now I think I shall shut up.
“race is still a biological term all the same”
Well what does that mean, though, PM? Do biologists find the term useful? Do they routinely use it? I can’t say I recall seeing it in the (popular) writing by biologists and zoologists and paleontologists that I’ve read.
And I’ve looked it up in several reference books now, my curiosity piqued by your certainty, only to find universal agreement that the term is now considered not very meaningful, to describe a social phenomenon but not a genetic one, etc.
So why are you so sure about this? I have to say, I think you’re wrong.
I think you may be confusing the biological term ‘race’, for use in general (and which doesn’t really have a social role for species other than humans), and the term ‘race’ used specifically for humans, which thre is more disagreement about whether it should be used in this sense.
You trust Gross don’t you?
http://tinyurl.com/4p2fz
““Race” is a word used widely and traditionally in biology to identify subpopulations within a species, that is, varieties, extended families, fuzzy subsets of individuals of common descent, sets more or less differentiable one from the other by appearance and/or behavior. It is no surprise that races or recognizable varieties in other species turn out to be distinguishable—although not necessarily easily—at the level of genetics.”
Ah – interesting article. Thanks, PM. I wasn’t aware of that book. I stand corrected! At least some biologists do find ‘race’ a useful term for differences among populations.
well we do have some lactose intolerance in our family and we just cut out on dairy products. ,,.