Richardson's article

[Linnea Micciulla]

Hi Noriko (and everyone else),

Thanks for your comments! A couple of thoughts:

On one level, I see the "view or standpoint" in question not as the
religious belief per se, but as the discrimination against the members of a
group.  So whether we are arguing about curtailing the civil rights of
Muslims, Hispanics, Japanese, women, etc., we can apply the rules of
argumentation to defend or attack a position regarding group discrimination.

It is currently unpopular to overtly criticize a people because of race, but
much more acceptable to discriminate based on culture or religion.
Toynbee's "In defense of Islamophobia" criticizes various religions without
apparent knowledge of anything beyond political news stories, and I would
say that in this context, "deep knowledge" of the religion in question is
not a critical factor.  I would suggest that the association of Islam with
terror is partly a result of the frequent use of "Islamic + militant" or
"Muslim + extremists" in our everyday discourse, to the exclusion of any
positive news about Muslims, and partly a result of long-term historical
denigration of Muslims, where they have been depicted as different and
inferior. When you have terror committed by someone like Timothy McVeigh,
his Catholic upbringing is almost never mentioned, but the religion of an
"Islamic" militant is always foregrounded.  The terrorist who "happens to be
Muslim" doesn't exist in Western media; it is presupposed that the religion
is to blame, regardless of economic and political realities, which are
mostly ignored.

I wouldn't say that different religions are "equal" but I would say that
everyone should have equal freedom of religion.  The vast majority of
practitioners of any major religion I am familiar with are normal,
law-abiding people - and I would arguing that law-abiding people should not
be discriminated against, regardless of their religion.

About essentialization and stratification - I also wondered initially about
the claim, "when essentialisation and stratification appear in combination,
the result will necessarily be prejudiced."  If we interpret 'prejudice' as
meaning a preconceived idea (which could be either favorable or unfavorable)
then I think this is true - at least, I couldn't think of any counter
examples.  For example, if my world experience tells me that Japanese people
are fabulous chefs, and I essentialize this idea to believe it applies to
all Japanese people, and then I stratify Japanese cooking above American
cooking, then I might automatically accept an invitation to dinner from you,
Noriko, over an invitation from someone else. :)  So that would be an
example of a favorable prejudice (which is, of course, not the most common
meaning of the word).  But I do think when these two elements,
essentialization and stratification, are combined, they necessarily lead to
a preconceived judgment.

Linnea