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Originally Posted by MattyC
How about Muslim registration (more xenophobic or ethnocentric, but I don't think semantics really matter here)? Or a gigantic wall blocking out Mexico?
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I don't think either of these policies is inherently racist. Or rather, I think this claim over-extends racism to apply where it shouldn't. I'll just take the Muslim registration one - I think the wall is treading pretty close to the line on racism but I'm not quite convinced it's over it.
Some of the people who want Muslims registered (or kept out entirely) are animated by actual hatred of Arabs. They assume Muslim equals Arab (which is obviously nonsense), they dislike Arabs as people, and that's the end of the story. "Keep 'em all out and keep the ones already here on a list if we can't get rid of 'em."
Others, though - and I think this is most of the people who would sign on to these Drumpf-propagated positions - are motivated by fear. Sure, they'll say, most Muslims are peaceful, non-dangerous people, but there will be a significant portion of the people who we let in who will be both Muslim and dangerous. So, just to be safe, let's not let any of them in, because while we'll be keeping out a bunch of totally innocent, non-dangerous people, and that sucks for them, we'll be keeping out the dangerous ones as well.
That's a non-bigoted position based on concerns founded on empirical evidence, it's just that the empirical evidence could be wrong, or you can argue that it shouldn't matter because we should be compassionate and take on certain inevitable risks out of concern for our fellow human beings, and these people are allowing fear to cloud their judgment with respect to that concern. These people can probably be dissuaded if you can get them to think rationally about it and not be emotionally driven - although, some probably just won't be convinced. They'll say that the interests they view as important require that they maintain this position. Unless those interests involve the supremacy of their race, that's not a racist position to hold.
There's a sort of "in between" position which is the "culture war" position, or you could call it the "where's my country gone" view. Basically, these people posit that they really like their culture the way it is, and if you're a community of a thousand people and you bring in another thousand people who see the world in a fundamentally different way, that culture will be altered. That's certainly a xenophobic view, and I have no doubt that a bunch of these guys are racists, but it's also factually correct - those cultural changes WILL happen. The concern is to ensure that to the extent they do, they happen for the better, ie to improve the status quo. That is by absolutely no means a foregone conclusion.