Quote from: peky on November 02, 2013, 08:31:24 PM
And in regard with the original premise of the OP is not a fart fetched idea to extend that a Muslim in a Muslim country is going to feel a "Muslim Privilege", and so we can get a Jewish privilege in Israel (or NY..LOL), and Hindu Privilege in India, and so on and so forth
Of course, like in Saudi Arabia where for the most part non-Muslims aren't even allowed into the country.
Main thing I was trying to say (rehashed again) is that with anyone with privilege (which of course depends on your locale, culture, etc.) it's easy to become blind to the benefits you have in society and blind to the needs of others. I know some white people who were quite upset when reading the
White Privilege essay, saying that we're in a "post-racial" society (geez, and this was before Obama came into office!) and that everyone is equal, and that it's not fair that African-Americans have affirmative action. Anyone who pays attention to social issues or isn't white will clearly explain how we're not in a post-racial society, and how white people still have privileges. (This is for Americans here, I can't speak for other countries). Realizing one has white privilege is a good thing, because then you can help be the end to systemic racial discrimination in policy or society.
Sometimes we just have the illusion that we're in a post-racial world because it's no longer politically correct to outright say discriminatory things like it was a few decades ago. Nowadays, most people at least know others of different races (
not exactly friends with people of other races), so some of the traditional discriminatory views have been shaken just by merely knowing and interacting with others outside of the same race. (If more people were actually close friends with people of other races, we'd likely have much less discrimination IMO).
It's just now that Muslims are the current people where it's totally acceptable to say hateful, stereotypical things about all over the place without even having to pretend you're not hateful (
for someone else's wording *warning, n word in the title*) --- as I've experienced, I hear hateful anti-Muslim, anti-anyreligionthatlooksdifferentthanme speech at work, in media, in movies, and here at Susan's Place. And, surprising to me, is that most of this speech that I've witnessed comes from Christians (there are some Atheists I've seen too). I'd venture to say that many people in the USA who say these things does not really know anyone who's Muslim or Sikh or Hindu or any number of religions that are not Judeo-Christian, perhaps the most interaction is with a cashier, or the guy/girl that is sometimes at the office water cooler at the same time, or the few times you sit near another on the train.
Privilege comes into this, because for the Americans I've seen/heard in my daily life (either talking about Muslims or going out of their way to try to insult me when they perceive me as a foreigner, or as a Muslim) are white and/or Christian, and it's easy to forget that there's benefits for being part of the majority religion, the one that most people are used to, the one that people don't see as threatening or foreign. It's easy to get afraid of the extremist Muslims out there and use your words to say "Islam is a threat" which paints a brush on
every Muslim in the world, and only recant and say "oh no, I only meant the radicals" when someone says something about it. To me, if someone said "blacks are a threat b/c X, Y, and Z" I'd say you were racist and not take any recant seriously, and I am sure many others would too; instead, it's fine here on Susan's to say "Muslims are a threat, b/c of X, Y, and Z", painting the stroke on every Muslim in the world, and that's perfectly fine to do here as I discovered and it's even condoned by some higher-ups. On Susan's, in the media, at work, etc. this type of outright Islamphobic speech of okay, most people don't even consider it to be hateful or unacceptable.
When you have privilege (whether it's white privilege in America, Muslim privilege in Saudi Arabia (although, in Saudi, you need to be the right kind of Muslim to get any privilege), able-bodied privilege anywhere, etc.), and you ignore your privilege, you can become another agent of repression. Instead of finding ways to be more inclusive, you can say "oh women/blacks/disabled folks/etc. are equal now" and continue on with the status quo because you don't even realize that things are tilted. It's fine to dislike extremist Muslims, or extremists of other faiths, who kill other people and repress others because they're doing something that's bad under any sort of moral viewpoint, but it's not acceptable to continue allowing broad stroked hatred to continue, and to allow ignorance to continue (while some people don't outright say hateful thigns against Muslims, in my daily life and here at Susan's I've heard/seen comments that show that many people don't even do some basic research).
Anyways, like I said before, I'll defend anyone who I perceive is getting the short end of the stick, whether you're Christian, white, Atheist, tan, rich, poor, whatever, I don't care. I take the "all men are created equal" part of the Constitution quite seriously, to me it truly means
all people, not just the white, male, British descent, property owners like it was more thought of at the time it was written. America is reaching another turning point, we're expanding equality further than we have before (most recently is for LGBTs like we've been seeing more and more in the news), but we're seeing some people pop up saying that certain people should just leave the country (thanks Gina), should assimilate by taking the rags off their heads, and would like to see similar laws to France and Canada which were mainly instated with Muslims in mind to limit religious expression. By ignoring the privileges available to us, whoever we are, wherever we are, and allowing the furtherance of public displays of hate, we're setting ourselves up to be hurt in the future. If we continue view it as acceptable to hate minorities (religious, racial, ethnic, etc.), we're cutting off our own legs, there'll be nothing left to stand on, no defenses left when lenses shift.
As often attributed to Martin Niemöller:
QuoteFirst they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me
Anyways, that's my soap box. For those that see Islam as a threat, who still want those who are different to either fully assimilate or to "go home", continue on. I don't expect many of you to become less public in your hatred or to remember that in the future Christians could be treated the way Muslims/other visible religious minorities currently are in America because of my long-winded (and likely poorly written) post here.
Again, all from the point of view from an American, mixed-race, non-Christian who sometimes gets mistaken for Muslim, US Constitution lovin' transguy, who just wants to see everyone at least make an attempt to put hatred aside and treat others the same way we want to be.
