Definitions

Submitted by Jerrold Katz (United States), Nov 22, 2005 at 16:15

I agree with you that racism does not include prejudice towards a group of people because of their religion. Unfortunately people use the term racist as a means of of demeaning somebody .

However people frequently misuse terms and the meaning of terms change. For example ant-Semitic refers to prejudice against Jews. It does not include Arabs, despite the fact that they are also Semitic in origin. Many Arabs have tried to argue that an Arab cannot be anti-Semitic because that would be self-hatred. This is wrong; anti-Semitic is now a proper noun.

In years gone by I was sometimes asked for my nationality when in fact the real question was "What is your religion?" My response was American and this would lead the questioner to change the quesation. For some reason it was thought that asking one about his/her nationality was polite whereas asking about religion was not.

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