Roger Pearse

Ancient texts do not share any of the ideas about race invented in the 19th or 20th century, for obvious reasons. Language seems more important; think of "barbarian", for instance.

The "racism" term was invented by the far left in the early 70's, as far as I know, as a slogan to silence opposition to coloured mass immigration by intimidation. Very successful it has been too. It was still a fringe idea in 1979, and "racist, racist" was chanted only by professional haters of that political orientation.

The incredibly vilified BNP undoubtedly refer to "Christian values" merely to indicate traditional British values.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Perhaps as someone deeply cynical, I might be allowed to reflect that there is something deeply ironic in atheists -- of all people -- demanding conformity to a set of values made up by one section of society a couple of decades ago. You ought to be demanding free thinking, remember?

Ben C Smith

Are you sure? Hannah Arendt first published her book on totalitarianism in 1951, and had completed it by 1949. I have not seen this first edition, but the 1968 reprint contains multiple references to racism.

And, according to B. H. Isaac, on page 1 of The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity, the OED gives 1936 as the first instance of the English word racism (from Lawrence Dennis, The Coming American Fascism).

Ben.

Roger Pearse

I can tell you from memory that I never heard it as a teenager in the UK in the early 70's. Not all knowledge is found in books. Possibly it was simply too fringe at that period, or in the UK?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

squiz

I get the impression that you consider anything slightly left of Margaret Thatcher to be "far left", Roger. Anyway, have you checked up on this claim? I don't have full access to the OED, but a quick search came up with the following link:
"Incredibly vilified"? You seem to be showing your true colours, Roger.

I think you should stick to ancient texts.

squiz

I guess they (and you) don't consider such people as Wilberforce as representing traditional British values.

squiz

Not everyone on this board is an atheist, Roger. you can't brand every non-believer an atheist.

Where do you get the idea that modern ideas of racial justice are only a couple of decades old? I already mentioned Wilberforce. Tell it to the anti-slavery campaigners in the US before the civil war. Why even my own grandfather paid for some Jewish people to emigrate from Austria back in the '30s. He was a huge fan of Kagawa who according to this link was found by certain American activists of the time as being a "standing rebuke to race prejudice."

Just some perhaps obscure examples off the top of my head, but I think it demonstrates that opposition to racial prejudice is nothing new.

Noone is demanding conformism to some new-fangled set of ideas. A bit of conformism to good-old basic human decency, though, wouldn't be bad.

Roger Pearse

I wondered if people would attack me personally, rather than address my comments; and attempt to stifle what I have to say, rather than discuss it. But then this is what I find amusing about these sorts of replies.

It's rather like shouting "Jew! Jew!", in fact.... or "heretic! heretic!" or "witch! witch!" when confronted with Wrong Thinking. Those who can't cope with free thinking tend to do this a lot, I notice; which is what makes it so funny -- to cynics like me -- to find *atheists* doing it. It rather makes a mockery of atheists claiming to be "free thinking", or "non-conformists" or "rebels", while this kind of thing goes on.

And anyway... since when was atheism identical with political correctness? Or, indeed, is it?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

Who said that I was?

Because I'm more than a couple of decades old. And calling this process of demonising anyone who resists the agenda "racial justice" is a particularly evil bit of weasel wording.

You are; and labelling a modern political position "good-old basic human decency" - and thereby demonising anyone who disagrees with the Programme - is to engage in terrifying bigotry, IMHO.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

DCHindley

A while back I found an article in Harvard Theological Review 94:4 (2001) 449–476, by Denise Kimber Buell, entitled "Rethinking the Relevance of Race for
Early Christian Self-Definition". It used to be available free, but alas no more. I provide a summary at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/10648

According to Buell, the four basic words are as follows (with a summarized
version of the definitions found in my Liddle & Scott intermediate lexicon):

GENOS etc (from GENW, obsolete root of GIGNOMAI, to become, be born, take
shape), race, descent, citizen (of a polis), a descendant or child, race in
regard to number = a nation, race in regard to time = an age/generation,
sex/gender, kind/genus opposite to EIDOS species

EQNOS, a company or body of people, a race/tribe, a nation/people, a
particular class of people

LAOS, the people, soldiers/army (esp. on land as opposed to fleet), common
people (as opposed to leaders), subjects (of a prince, pl).

FULON, (from FUW, to spring up, descended from, to be by nature), a stock,
race, kind, associated group (pl), sex (as a class), a race/people/nation,
clan, tribe

A couple associated ideas seem to need be listed as well:

EIDOS, (from EIDW, to see/know), the form, shape, figure, (Lat.) species, a
form, sort, particular kind, a particular state, a plan

EQOS, custom, usage, manners, habit

Buell says:

"From the mid-second century B.C.E. on, some texts [2 Macc. & Judith] also
speak about people “becoming Judaeans.” While Shaye Cohen [_The Beginnings
of Jewishness_] has persuasively argued that Jewish authors adapted “Greek
political thinking” to reformulate Judaeanness “as a way of life and as a
citizenship” that one can join, he views this way of thinking—for both
Greeks and Judaeans—as a indication of the “removal of the ethnicity from
the concept of ‘Hellene’ ” and Ioudaios." (pg 468)

"Religious practices also helped to define and cohere other ethnic and civic
identities. Although ethnicity was at least nominally linked to geography
(Syrians, Egyptians, etc.), Philo of Alexandria, for example, argues that
Jews constitute an ethnos and genos unlike all others because they are
spread out over the world (27). For Philo, it is religious practices that
unify Jews even when far away from Judaea." "27 See esp. Legat. 214–16 (the
vast numbers of Jews spill over the boundaries of Judaea), 281–84 (in this
context, Agrippa uses the dispersion of Jews to try to persuade Gaius by
saying that Gaius’s actions in Judaea will have effects throughout the
empire, resulting in empire-wide praise of Gaius); see also Flaccus 44–46
(in which Philo explains that there are too many Jews for one country to
hold them all)." (pg 459)

"By the first century C.E., religion was well-established both as a public
discourse and specifically as a way of asserting, contesting, and
transforming racial, civic, and national identities across the Mediterranean
basin." (pg 459)

"Although religiosity and ethnicity/race need not have anything to do with
each other, in the conceptual landscape of the Roman world, religious
practices were often deemed key indicators of ethnic or civic identity. It
is surprising that scholars of Christian origins have interpreted the
religious practices of Christians in sharp distinction from those of
non-Christians on this point. Ethnic reasoning was a valuable rhetorical
strategy for early Christian authors in part because religiosity and race
were already perceived as mutually constitutive in Roman period texts,
institutional practices and policies. Early Christian authors preserve much
more than challenge the prevailing associations between race and religious
practices. By adapting the notion that religious practices and ethnicity are
constitutively interrelated, early Christians could define themselves as
members of a people unjustly deprived of their right to worship or as a
resisting people who embody an alternative to dominant peoples in the Roman
empire, especially Romans and Greeks (depending on location)." (pp 458-9)

More of my musings on the subject was in a previous message:

Some terms have to be used very carefully. "Ethnic" is such a term I
think. The actual term, at least in the dictionary I have, does not include
a distinct "racial" component. This is important.<<

“Ethnic” was chosen, on purpose, to avoid confusion with modern contentions
about “race.” However, the word “race” was used by ancients, including Jews,
to describe Jews and other distinct groups. The semantic range of the Greek
word for “race” overlapped that of the Greek word for “ethnic,” and in
practice terms like these were often used interchangeably. In a post I had
already sent before I saw your present post, I referred to an interesting
article "Rethinking the Relevance of Race for Early Christian
Self-Definition," (by Denise Kimber Buell, HTR 94:4 (2001), 449-476, which
can be found online at their web site). This article emphasized the way that
both Jews and early Christians defined themselves as a “race” on the basis
of collectively shared traditions and practices. Jews probably did so as
persons of Jewish descent moved (or were moved) outside of their traditional
homeland, but still managed to retain common customs and beliefs that set
them apart from their more syncretistic neighbors. Christians did so as part
of their attempts to distinguish themselves from Judaism as well as support
their plea to have their religious faith officially recognized on the same
basis as the Jewish religion was.

Still, to studiously avoid words like “race” and “ethnic” in reaction to the
tragic events of the 20th century CE holocaust, is a lot like letting the
tail wag the dog. ...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/10638

DCH (on break)