Dear Readers,
A discussion on The Talk reveled that a famous actor ( whose name escapes me at the moment) had made racist statements and was unapologetic about them and goes to a restaurant in Beverly Hills run by people of color. An online clip had a black woman telling him that he needed to fast, pray and meditate. I applaud her for speaking out against his racist antics, however I don't think praying, fasting or meditate is going to help him overcome his prejudices. It got me to thinking, how do we know he may not privately use religion an excuse for his racist beliefs. People do use religion as an excuse to be a bigot and to hate on others. Look at it this way, the God of the Bible, Yahweh, endorses hate and prejudice. Remember this saying: Jacob he loved, but Esau he hated. How can a loving god hate anyone?
Yahweh shows prejudice when he orders the Israelites to ruthlessly slaughter the Canaanites and drive all pagans out of Israel. Why should all the Canaanites be killed, were they all really that bad? The stories of the Amalekites and the Canaanites was incited against Native-American by European Christians who came to America. The Natives were viewed as "filthy pagans". It reminds me of what one of those commentators on that Steve Wells blog post said that Yahweh hates homosexuality and that any "true Christian" understands this as this person implied. Well, Yahweh would have no reason to hate homosexuality, just because it would make him feel uncomfortable and the Biblical authors really don't give any reasonable explanation as to why he is homophobic. Some Christians think that what is written in the Bible about homosexuality is wrong, even if they don't admit it and I would have to agree, even though I am an atheist. The Biblical authors write that the pagans are doing all of these "evil" things and therefore they should be exterminated.
How can you justify wiping out a whole group of people? How can you justify hate, slavery, genocide and prejudice by using ancient texts whose authors had such limited understandings of the world? I'm a liberal person, I don't care much for liberal Christianity, but I am glad they cherry-pick the Bible or else we would all be killing each other because of the numerous commandments in that text which would lead to chaos, if not the end of the human race. We would all be using this text to justify our racist, anti-pagan, anti-Semitic and homophobic prejudices and even justify acts such as murder, discrimination, violence or even genocide. People who eat fried eggs with grape jelly for instance, that's gross to me but I don't go around dehumanizing them, threating them with being burned in a lake of fire for all eternity or facing eternal death for being a "sinner" or trying to deny them their civil rights just because I don't care to eat fried eggs with grape jelly, if other people do, that's fine with me. My point is that this middle-aged celebrity guy may be religious and could think that Yahweh and the Bible endorses racism for all we know, if he is religious and specifically a Christian. How would this young woman encouraging him to pray, fast and meditate said in her YouTube video know that he doesn't use religion as an excuse for being a racist. I am NOT saying that he does, I am only saying WHAT IF he does?
The KKK certainly have used religion as an excuse for their racist ideology. There are people in the KKK believe that Yahweh wants them to be racist and even wipe all "inferior" groups of people off of the face of the earth. That's is one reason why the KKK would probably try to justify as to why they lynched blacks for voting, bombed African-American Christian churches, tried to keep black children from being able to attend the same schools as their white peers to gain access to better education and fought to prevent people of different skin colors from being able to legally marry each other. Granted, all racial purity groups may not use religion as a means for their prejudice, there are many that do though. The KKK have cited religion at times as a means for why they view people of color as if we were nothing but dirt on their shoes.
Racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia when shown by religious fanatics is not prejudice in their eyes, they are merely doing what they believe their god wants them to do and apparently we shouldn't speak out against and challenge their religiously-inspired prejudices because their hate and bigotry has been mandated by a deity. You know something, when your god hates all the same people that you do and dislikes all the same things that you dislike, you know that god was made in your image, not the other way around. When such prejudice is shown and acted on by fundamentalist religious institutions, then your religion becomes and behaves not like a religion; it is actually an organized hate-group using religion as an excuse to justify it's hatred and prejudices for people who are a little different than you.
Well, this dude really seems to be trying to avoid acknowledging the fact that he's a racist, he won't admit it to the media but he doesn't deny it either. He even has a black wife from what I heard. How nuts is that! She has to really feel awkward about this situation. I know if it were me, I would say " Why are you even with me if you have a problem with black people, I don't understand". It is a question that deserves an answer. The dude is obviously confused. Hopefully, the people of color that he knows will find someone else to hang out with. You know what they say, it is worse to be called a "racist", then to actually be a racist.
Sincerely,
B.W.
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