And refusing to do so will just ensure they stay bigots, and increase their numbers because you’ll be seen as agreeing with their bigotry. If bigotry isn’t condemned, people tend to assume it must be true or otherwise its opponents would do so.
That’s a rhetorical tactic the Right has successfully used for decades. Demand people be “polite” and not call them bigots, then turn around and say “see, they know we’re right, that’s why they don’t call us bigots”.
Love the sinner, hate the sin. It doesn’t work for everything, but there’s a reason an extremely popular and successful proselytizing group has that motto.
Because it’s a great way to engage in persecution while pretending to be nice people. It’s the reasoning of the Inquisition, or in the modern era homosexual and transgender “conversion” camps. "We’re torturing you for your own good".
Their “love” is indistinguishable from hatred and cruelty. People kill themselves because of that “love”.
Yes, because it gave them an excuse to demonize sinners (and, in particular, LGBT people) while pretending they are doing so out of love. It is a phrase to mollify the faithful who start to feel uncomfortable about how these particular Christians treat others.
Maybe at one point it had good intentions, but it is a widely known phrase of hate that is effectively banned in queer spaces. It “worked” in the sense that it let the sinners know that said Christian love was a sham and that they were actually hated.
I guess it was also successful in convincing some outsiders that they were acting out of love, too. But not for the targets of the actual tactic.
In any inclusive Christian space I’m aware of, this phrase is taboo if not banned, because it’s seen for the transparent lie that it is.
There is nothing incompatible between the two options. There is no reason that someone who doesn’t hate trans people will get offended if hatred for trans people is called out.
And the whole “peel off” idea was exactly the problem with the tactics of the last election. You’re not peeling off the Republican voters in remotely appreciable numbers. The people up for grabs are the nonvoters. And pretty much all of them I know refused to vote because they saw both parties as the same. The Democrats have to stand up for people—trans people, workers, the oppressed, and so on.
It is ridiculous to accuse Der Trihs or anyone else in this argument of not wanting the Democrats to win elections. We want them to win, and are pointing out the mistakes they are making.
He’s right: coming off like you wont call out bigotry because of fear of offending will make a decent portion of the base see them as just supporting the bigots.
All of that said, it’s more effective and thus more practical to call out bigoted behavior as bad without using the word “bigoted.” When you to point out that such behavior is bigoted, people often misconstrue that as an insult directed at them, and then double down.
Also, similar to “racist,” these things exist on a spectrum. The problem is that society thinks of it as binary, like 0s and 1s: Either you are a Racist, or you are Not a Racist.
So when someone is only slightly racist, but gets called Racist, he/she thinks they are being portrayed as a white-hood-wearing-Klansman or Nazi kind of Racist, which, of course, makes them dig down and bristle defensively. Like saying they are 100 on the Racist scale when they are more like 23.
The Catholic Church? The nuns taught me that exact phrase back in 4th grade in the 1960s. That was long before it was appropriated as a queerphobic tool. When the class was assigned to illustrate religious concepts with crayons, the kid next to me wrote that phrase and under it drew a picture of a Viet Cong standing next to the grave of the American soldier he’d killed. So it’s a sin to fight against the invaders of your homeland? It reveals the unconscious attitude of American exceptionalism, tinged with racism, that whatever Americans do must be right and proper, so that anyone who resists is a sinner, that we kids were raised to believe.
Those are racists looking for an excuse not to examine their own beliefs and prejudices. If I said something racist and someone told me how racist that was, my first (and second, etc.) response is going to be to take that to heart and try to do better.
If your goal is to try to be less racist, you’ll appreciate the feedback. If your goal is to cling to your old bigoted ways, even if you didn’t realize they were bigoted, then you’ll take offense.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin,” isn’t the “motto” of Christianity, though. It’s a phrase trotted out by some Christians who are trying to reconcile their self image as a good and compassionate person, with the way they treat people who aren’t like them.
This is terrible advice that will never die no matter how often it’s shown to be objectively incorrect. It’s the advice of someone who’s sympathetic to civil rights, but not actually involved. It’s the complaint of someone who wants to maintain their progressive values, but not sacrifice any of their personal connections. Because if an idea or opinion is bigoted, shouldn’t it be called out? And calling out someone important in your life is hard, and kind of scary. Much easier if everyone just pretends bigotry isn’t bigotry. Then nobody has to make any hard decisions.
Other than the people who are actually affected by the bigotry in question, of course.
So, if a person is only say “5% racist”, but according to this theory that everyone is racist- then the term “racist” has no meaning. It is the same as saying “human”.
But that is not how "racism: is defined-
having, reflecting, or fostering the belief that race (see race entry 1 sense 1a) is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race… racist
2 of 2
noun
pluralracists
: a person who is racist : someone who holds the belief that race (see race entry 1 sense 1a) is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
We now have gotten into a Humpty-Dumpty definition.
I was joking about that Christian expression, but i think it’s been effective in terms of being able to convert people rather than just writing them off as sinners.
I think we all need to call out bigotry. But i don’t think we should go around saying, “you’re a bigot and i won’t interact with you because of it”. At least, not as a first approach. Because i think a lot of people don’t recognize when they are saying bigoted things and making bigoted assumptions. And at least some of the time they are willing to change if they see how they are hurting people with their bigotry.
If someone embraces bigotry, sure, write them out of your life. Refuse to do business with them. But i think it’s worth attempting to engage, first.
I don’t think anyone is “X% racist”. I think we all sometimes do racist things. Some of us are embarrassed when we realize that, and try to do better next time. Others are proud and loud about their racism. But if you assume that “so and so is a good person, so he can’t be racist” you will draw a lot of extremely bad conclusions.
By appealing to people’s worst traits by portraying persecution as “love” and encouraging brutality. That hardly makes it desirable.
Hard disagree. Everyone who was raised in a racist society is racist. There are cultures, both now and historically, where racism just isn’t a thing. Ethnocentrism may be a human characteristic, but the “race” issue is a comparatively modern one.
In any case, if it is a spectrum rather than a binary, it’s certainly possible to be less racist. All humans are equally human, but they’re not all equally racist.
Well, several posters have claimed everyone is racist. Argue with them. AND there is a Great Debate thread about just this, so maybe we can stick with the political issues here?
Has it, though? Christianity did a great job at expanding across the globe, but how much of that expansion can genuinely be attributed to embracing “Hate the sin, not the sinner,” as a philosophy, and not “Convert to Christianity or I’ll cave in your skull with this mace?”
“It’s better to lose your skullcap than your skull.”
I would argue those are related. “Convert or I’ll kill you” has been more effective than “I’ll kill you, wrong-thinker”.
Most religions before Christianity weren’t universalist, as in, they didn’t believe that everyone had to worship the way that they did. The fact that Christianity did hold that everyone should be Christian is probably more relevant than either of the above.
Did you mean universalist here? Perhaps you meant exclusionist?
A universalist believes in universal reconciliation – that everyone will be saved regardless of how they worship (contrast Christian Universalism with Religious Exclusivism).