Race or Religion?
In the excerpt from "The Racialization of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism in the United States," Khyati Y. Joshi discusses the identity issues related to religion and race. Joshi focuses on the religious and racial identification issues of Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. The boundaries between race and religion are often blurred and many often make false assumptions of one's religion based off of his/her race. Joshi delves into this discussion by tracing back to the beginning of this identity crisis with colonial America where the white race became associated with Christianity. From this point, the association of race with religion became widespread. Religious identity became a biological trait that could not be changed in the eyes of white Americans. For example, being Jewish was no longer just a religion, but also a race. The boundary between racial and religious identity has been eliminated and they are no longer different aspects. If one is Indian, they are often automatically assumed to be Hindu, while those of middle eastern descent are often assumed to Sikhi or Islamic. Joshi exemplifies how the racialization of Hinduism, Islam and Sikhism renders those faiths theologically, socially, and morally illegitimate in the popular eye.
1. "When religion is racialized, a particular set of phenotypical features, understood in a specific social and historical context, comes to be associated with a given religion and/or with other social traits. The racialization of religion results in or exacerbates the ethnoreligious oppression of the minority group" (Yoshi). How do you think the boundaries between race and religion can be more defined? What other identity factors are often used to form assumptions of people? What do you think constitutes one's identity?
2. Joshi emphasizes the idea of white supremacy as the cause of the blurring of the boundaries between race and religion. What are other examples of white supremacy conflicts in history and how do they involve racialization?
1. The boundaries between race and religion can be explicitly defined but since it is instilled in people to rely on cognitive misers, the boundaries will continue to be problematic. Appearance is a major factor that also causes people to make quick and false assumptions. What constitutes one's identity is the characteristics and morals that each person lives by.
ReplyDelete2. Because White supremacy in the past has led to the construction of hierarchies for intangible concepts such as religion and race, it has led to the recialization of for example socioeconomic status as well. There is an immediate assumption that White people are high in socioeconomic standing when it actually varies in the United States.
I think it's really hard to distinguish race and religion effectively. As mentioned, throughout time we have unconsciously linked specific race with a religion. However, religions do rely on the 4Cs. Like the Jewish article we read, some non-practice Jews only consider themselves Jews because of the genetics. In that case, they are not followers of Judaism. I think language is also used to make assumptions. It's a rather more complicated to define one's identity. Clearly religion and race are two very big components. They can both be called experiences and I think that's what identifies a person - his or her unique experience.
ReplyDeleteAs I am studying similar materials in my English class and we are just talking about American Indians, I think it's good example of white supremacy. Even though the Native Americans were indigenous inhabitants in America, the Europeans still took their land by a series of Indian removal acts.
The boundaries between race and religion can be more defined as Joshi says in this article, by understanding there are, “multiple points of intersection between race and religion without blurring the boundaries between racial construct of ethnicity and racial ethnic construction of religion.” This means understanding that some people within a certain race could practice a religion, unlike blurred boundaries where a person’s race generates an assumption of their religious identity. Along with ethnicity and race, some other factors used to form assumptions of people include gender, social class, or where they are from. All these factors pertain to the surface qualities of a person, not their true individual identities. Someone’s identity includes all aspects of a person that makes them who they are. In the reading, Joshi describes how the construction of identity involves establishing a sense of inclusion and exclusion, “establishing one who ‘is’ involves identifying others who are ‘not’". In relation to the article, the racialization process of other people destroys their identities' by erasing the diversity of beliefs within religions as well as reducing the view of these people to only one aspect of them.
ReplyDeleteI believe the race is used to describe people’s identities, which tells where he or she comes from. The race can be categorized to several groups, such as cultural traditions, ethnics, languages, or geographical areas. As we learned from this class, the religion is defined by four ingredients-creed, code, cultus, and community. The author pointed out when social scientists and scholars study on race, they must “consider religion along with gender, ethnicity, and social class as forces that shape, unify, and divide communities.” The boundaries between race and religion are hard to be explicit. Sometimes the language or the accent also is a factor used to form assumptions of people. I think the individual personality or characteristics constitutes people’s identity.
ReplyDeleteThe boundaries between race and religion will become more and more defined as young students and populace begin to grow into a world where one can choose what religion they practice. The baby boomers as a whole have been less religious than their parents and as a result have given their children the ability to choose what religion they could follow, if any. This “openness” of religion will change our view of religion as something associated with race into something anybody can practice. A problem today however is that with 9-11 the American populace has grown to demonize Islamic peoples as a whole, and anybody who appears to be Islamic which lumps in Sikhs and Hindus in the same group. Another problem is that those young people with religious freedom generally do not choose Islam as their religion; they are more attracted to far eastern religions such as Buddhism, which follows a more lenient method of practice.
ReplyDeleteEven though the Jewish people do define themselves as both racially Jewish and religiously Jewish, racialization of their religion has been problematic in the history of their culture and race. Jewish people have been persecuted in the Spanish inquisition, with a form of Catholic supremacy, and in WWII with Hitlers white supremacy. Another example of white supremacy in racialization of religions is the racialization of “black” denominations of Christianity. Blacks were segregated into predominantly black Methodist and Baptist churches and were excluded from many other denominations.
The boundaries between race and religion will become more stark when America's population becomes more integrated. Coastal integration is not enough anymore as as soon as the blended societies bleed into the plains and Midwest. The exposure alone forces the younger population to ask questions and learn. Educators will also play a heavy part and need to change curriculum. World History mainly focuses on Europe and the World Wars but that is not enough to learn about Asian, African, and even South American countries. It blinds us from a majority of the world and without the exposure one can not hope for change.
ReplyDeleteThe example Joshi mentions in the article is the preaching of Christianity as America's sole religion. Buchanan, our former president, wanted everyone to recognize Jesus and our savor and Christmas even became a national holiday. But the most major example of this is slavery and the casualties that result from the ownership of African-Americans and the Civil War. Ideas didn't change until almost a hundred years later after the Civil Rights Movement.
Hello. I found your discussion questions very interesting and also challenging. I think it is hard to clearly define the boundaries between race and religion. It seems like there will always be a grey area, instead of just race and just religion. I think this because there are those stereotypical features that are associated with a certain religion and/or race. However, I do believe that stereotypes grow from truths, even if it is not true for every single person. As for white supremacy, I feel like there are other forces that cause the blurring of boundaries, not just white supremacy. White supremacy has caused conflict in history-- such as during World War II and the Civil Rights Movement. These involve racialization through people in WWII thinking the Aryan race was the superior race, and the Klu Klux Klan, thinking that they were superior.
ReplyDeleteOver time the boundaries between religion and race have become more distinct. Where as in the past groups such as the kkk were prominant, today tolerance is praised. Still, due to the terrorist attacks that have occured in the past ten years, religion and race have been compromised once again. Like Joshi mentions, Christianity has been pushed as Americas religion though it certainly is not. As a result middle easterners have taken on a single identity as muslim. Terrorists claim to be fighting a holy war for the muslim religion but it seems not to be a holy war against America in our eyes. Now any middle eastern individual is assumed to be apart of this holy war. Americans do not see the difference between Islam and Hinduism and all of the sects between that Joshi describes.
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