Posts Tagged ‘racism’

” … the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets” George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

We Americans have an unfortunate penchant for abbreviations. Who else would shorten a two-letter word like “at” to the symbol @?  I can type “at” quicker than @; so, at least for me, it is not an efficient symbol. While such foibles can be seen as endearing peccadillos, our simplistic political sloganeering and labeling is misleading and has contributed significantly to the divisions in America and the increasingly violent political action, such as has been seen at Berkeley and murderously at Charlottesville. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the consistent accusations against those who voted in favor of Brexit, the referendum on Great Britain leaving the European Union (EU), is that they are racists.  The charge is based upon the facts that the great majority of those who voted for Brexit are white and many are motivated by an anti-immigrant bias, even animus.  In contrast, the opponents of Brexit view themselves as tolerant, even welcoming, of racial differences.

The problem with the anti-Brexits’ racist charge is that it is inexact and self-serving.  Read the rest of this entry »

The initial response of Fox News to the murder of nine people attending a Bible study in a Charleston, South Carolina church was to question that the attack was racially motivated and instead claimed that it was an attack on Christianity. http://mediamatters.org/video/2015/06/18/foxs-steve-doocy-its-extraordinary-that-charles/204043 The friends who forwarded the video link countered correctly that it was a racist attack.  While Dylan Roof, the attacker, has not yet explicitly mentioned any religious motives, he appears to have been influenced by “Christian” white supremacists.  Thus, the reality is that it was both a racist attack and an attack on Christianity because racism is a heresy that opposes and perverts orthodox Christianity. Read the rest of this entry »

            One of the films that I enjoyed watching with my mother was the delightful 1948 movie about Norwegian immigrants “I Remember Mama.”  Remembering our parents and being grateful for them is not only an aspect of obeying the fifth commandment to honor our father and mother but also is critical to our emotional health.  I’d like to remember my mother, who, though not dead, is struggling these days. Read the rest of this entry »

My last post was inspired by the following quotation from G. K. Chesterton.  “Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.”  I reflected on how we criticize sins in others that we aren’t susceptible to but excuse those which we are more inclined to commit.  I also pointed out how strongly Jesus condemned this kind of self-justifying personal hypocrisy. 

This time I’d like to look at the issue of institutional hypocrisy or the way in which political “liberals” and “conservatives” often agree on evils but find different ones excusable.  Read the rest of this entry »