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I don’t disagree with anything stated in the article (which, by the way, is analogizing Islamophobia with anti-Semitism, not claiming that anti-Semitism is another word for Islamophobia).
Bringing things back on topic, the article mentions Islamophobia in this context, which goes hand-in-hand with Christian privilege in the United States:
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US Republican politicians have suggested databases for Muslims, closing mosques, interning Muslims and depriving them of constitutional rights.
I worked in a company that supports literally thousands of employees and there was no special advantage to Christians what so ever.
Did non Christians get their religious holidays off work wirh full.pay or get doublev time if that had to work those holidays? No Christmas parties or decorations at work?
Did non Christians get their religious holidays off work wirh full.pay or get doublev time if that had to work those holidays? No Christmas parties or decorations at work?
The concept of group privilege is (mis)used by politicians but it is no less valid for that.
I am responding to this post because I am unsure how my post was received. This current post is not directed toward you, Mordant, but I would like to make another attempt to address the OP especially after reading some more responses. Not sure if anyone is interested in the etymology of the word privilege. At my house, eyes start to roll when a single word becomes my main focus. LOL.
It appears the word privilege is compound-like, at some point combining words that meant private and law. Private has a sense of not of the state or the public - individual. So when a person acts according to their preference, then they are acting privately. The state has no say. An example that was brought up earlier was the Christian contractor who no longer responded to the Jewish client once it was found out that they didn't share the same faith. It is to be inferred (hope I have the right word) that discrimination based on religion was applied here, but it was not something made explicitly clear. That is key. Anyone can be a contractor. So the right to provide and refuse service belongs to the public, but the reasons for providing or refusing services can belong to privacy. And I think most people, religious or not, would like to ensure that they are not forced to provide services.
It is this application of law and privacy, which sound more like rights, that allows the term privilege to be applied liberally. One example that was brought up in one of the articles was the Starbucks red cup. It is safe to assume that it was meant to be inclusive, but other private minds did not agree to be a part of that group, which lead to claims of being left out. They wouldn't be wrong, but in our current state, the most they could do is boycott the business. They could also speak their private thoughts publicly. The troublesome part is not people exercising their rights. Instead, it is the reasons for exercising them in the first place - a very specific private thought. Their religion. In some instances, their Christian stance is nothing more than a message sent to a company like Starbucks. Okay, that's not accurate. Those who are not of the same mind may come out and chastise them into silence. On the other hand, the same reason in other contexts can be against the law.
The same cannot be said of other private reasons that afford privileges to certain groups. For example, maybe I only want to do business with people with a certain credit rating. On a personal level, it might say something about me. On a public level, it is not against the law to only provide service based on that criteria.
So this thread is pretty open-ended. I think it is safe to say that Christian privilege does exist as well as other religious privileges. Its influence may be felt more strongly because it is a majority religion and people have a right to preferences.
My last post on this thread. I am linking an article by Warren J. Blumenfeld, whose writings are cited several times in the Wikipedia link posted by the OP. He actually does compare Christians and Muslims so if the wiki is relevant to this thread so is Blumenfeld’s argument, as he is cited several times. He makes a nuanced argument that actually makes a very different statement than what the thread seems to presume.
He names extremists groups that are named terrorists . I am deleting political references.
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. ******** understand, unlike the *****, that the perpetrators of this violence do not, in fact, represent the teachings of Islam, and to refer to them as such would not only validate their claims to divine inspiration, but would, in turn, unduly implicate the billions of non-violent follows of Islam worldwide.
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I believe that people who advocate and inflict injury and murder of innocent non-combatants, young people, women, people adhering to other religious backgrounds, and people of the same religion to which they themselves claim to follow, we must define them for what they are: "evil," "criminals," "barbarians," "thugs," "savages," "monsters," and yes, "terrorists."
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. If it is not already quite obvious, my intent is to expose the wide and deep double standard in the representations used in public discourse in reporting and discussing violent acts. When officials suspect Muslims of committing crimes or inciting violence, leaders and the media almost automatically term them "Islamic terrorists" or "radical Islamic terrorists," but rarely if ever refer to Christian perpetrators of crime and violence as "radical Christian terrorists."
Which news outlets called Timothy McVey, the convicted perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, a "radical Christian terrorist"? Who referred to the illegal "occupiers" of federal lands for 41 days in Oregon, led by Ammon Bundy as "radical Christian terrorists"? When was the last time we heard members of the myriad so-called white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation called "radical Christian terrorists"? The double standard not only exposes inherent Islamophobia, but by naming "Islam" and "Muslims" in the rhetoric regarding the criminal acts, it wrongly legitimizes and validates the suspects' claimed religious justification for undertaking these actions.
Christian Privilage is a concept, not a reality. If Blumenfeld is being cited to support this concept, I find it very puzzling because that is not what he is talking about.
If this is not on topic, the Moderators may delete my post.
Wow that is a fantastic contribution to this discussion, very well-reasoned and not at all as pedantic as you feared ;-)
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Originally Posted by elyn02
It appears the word privilege is compound-like, at some point combining words that meant private and law. Private has a sense of not of the state or the public - individual. So when a person acts according to their preference, then they are acting privately. The state has no say. An example that was brought up earlier was the Christian contractor who no longer responded to the Jewish client once it was found out that they didn't share the same faith. It is to be inferred (hope I have the right word) that discrimination based on religion was applied here, but it was not something made explicitly clear. That is key. Anyone can be a contractor. So the right to provide and refuse service belongs to the public, but the reasons for providing or refusing services can belong to privacy. And I think most people, religious or not, would like to ensure that they are not forced to provide services.
Yes and the contractor, in a sense, was just exercising his public right to freedom of association too. It is just that the bigotry that brought him to disassociate from Jews is the problem. Let us say hypothetically that I as a businessman had certain experiences consistently with Jewish people, let us say they have a tendency to "grind" me on price or some other cultural "tic" and I just don't want to deal with it anymore. That is arguably one thing. But the belief that Jews are uniquely responsible for some sort of devious conspiracy to undermine non-Jews and are therefore bad and untrustworthy in toto -- something for which there's no evidence or truly any personal experience to go by -- because of the gaslighting of Jews by others -- that is ANOTHER thing.
The irony here is that due to the freedom of association, the contractor was doing nothing illegal and in fact exercising a personal "right". It can't be controlled without being a net detriment to society as a whole. Once you start forcing people together who don't want to be together, once association isn't completely voluntary, you have other problems to deal with.
But this does not make the contractor's actions right or good, either. He was happy to do the work when he saw the client as just another human like himself. He was unhappy when, because of new information, the client fell into an "inhuman" or at least de-humanized category despite no actions on their part that would put them in said category. Any thinking that diminishes the humanity of others is, not to put too fine a point on it, evil. Particularly when it's entirely unprovoked and the problem exists only in between someone's ears.
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Originally Posted by elyn02
So this thread is pretty open-ended. I think it is safe to say that Christian privilege does exist as well as other religious privileges. Its influence may be felt more strongly because it is a majority religion and people have a right to preferences.
One might argue that the group that happens to be in the majority has a right to its preferences as well. I would say they have a right but it is not limitless. It is no different than a person with a preference for listening to very loud acid rock music, if they take it to a certain level, will run afoul of the law, and probably afoul of community standards well before that.
There are also always competing concerns. Optimize for X, you inherently de-optimize for Y. So if you optimize for the sensibilities and preferences of your in-group, you maybe be actively diminish the quality of life for some part of the out-group. Particularly when your ideology professes to be one of love and patience and forbearance, then it is not unreasonable to ask you to not always have your way in everything. Mostly what the religious are asked to do is to not impose their sensibilities on society and in exchange society provides them with some concessions, too: exemptions from taxes and equal-opportunity requirements, etc.
Some religious just get greedy and are blind to the privileges even that they are specifically granted, and feel they don't have enough privilege if they are in any way bumping into the rights of others.
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