If I, a white man from America, call myself a black man with white skin, it doesn’t make me a black man. Nor does a Christian calling themselves a Muslim make them one. It just makes them look ignorant – did this person NOT KNOW WHAT COUNTRY AND CULTURE THEY WERE FROM?

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>Yes, but let’s not go too far with wishful thinking. The fact that racially-targetted medicine is a growing and successful realm and that recent genome studies do show racial markers suggests, sadly, that the earlier empirical suggestions that race was just a figment are a bit off. I wish they weren’t, but there you go.

Wow – something sensible was allowed to remain.

The sad truth about “racism” is that Europeans are mutts who have been mass-raped for 2500 years, and are probably the least-qualified people on earth to talk about races, real OR imaginary.

Perhaps, in fifty years, when we understand genetics a HELL of a lot better than we do now, we will understand complexes of genes like we now understand individual genes. Perhaps we might also know something about genetic determinants of behavior.

In that case, ALL human thought on “racism” will have to be re-thought.

Currently, the whole discussion reminds me of phlogiston chemists fighting with caloric chemists.

You may be an expert in many things, Hamid, but it is obvious that the Western Balkans is not one of them. Muslim, in the Bosnian context, has been used as an ethnic tag for most of the last century and was officially recognised as such for about half that time. Indeed, I remember being at a conference where a paper was given by someone who described himself as a Muslim of the Orthodox Christian faith.

Dear me. So if someone singles out say, South Africa, or Zimbabwe, or Algeria or Ethiopia over human rights concerns, does that make them racist too? It may be that they are, but it is not necessarily the case.

If folk criticise the US govt for human rights abuses, does that make them necessarily anti-American? If folk agitate for sanctions against Russia, does that mean, necessarily, that they have some sort of deep seated antipathy towards Russians?

One can quite agree that worse human rights abuses may exist elsewhere. But it doesn’t (and shouldn’t) stop human rights investigators, lawyers etc objecting when abuses, or alleged abuses, take place in any area of the world.

It is true that criticism of Israel, and support for a boycott, can be motivated by antisemitism. You can even make the argument, based on the view that antisemitism is rising, that it may be likely the case – one can argue about that, but at least the contention is not actually absurd.

So all I am saying is it not necessarily the case.

To say it is necessarily the case is simply a basic fallacy.

Superb!

I see that ‘absurd’ is the apologist’s flavour of the month.
Regardless of ‘disputing’ the allegations against Israel (are you going to ‘dispute’ the lunatic claim that ‘Israel has the USA in its pocket’? What about ‘Israel is worse than the Nazis’?), the obsessive focusing on Israel is clear evidence of bad faith, and it is so however much you try to pooh-pooh it. All you are really saying is that it’s an argument for which you have no answer.

Shouting ‘absurd’ doesn’t make it so. Israel and the Jews are singled out. You can sell them as many indulgences as you like, or even give them away: it doesn’t absolve them from singling out one country and nation from all others, which is racist. In this case, the term is antisemitism.

Yes, but let’s not go too far with wishful thinking. The fact that racially-targetted medicine is a growing and successful realm and that recent genome studies do show racial markers suggests, sadly, that the earlier empirical suggestions that race was just a figment are a bit off. I wish they weren’t, but there you go.

As you ought to be aware, the Bosnian Muslims or Bosniaks are a nationality, not a religious group. Many of them are atheists. You have absolutely no evidence that Jenna Delich is a Muslim in the religious sense; you are simply making assumptions about her religious background on the basis of her supposed ethnicity. And that is racist.

Quite apart from the fact that most of the activists responsible for the campaign to boycott Israeli academics are not Muslims anyway.

‘A person is born into a race while a person acquires certain religious beliefs.’

Totally untrue. A person is not ‘born into a race’ – except the human race. Dividing humans into imaginary ‘races’ is itself a racist enterprise.

Yeah, and no-one likes standing next to the bloke on the tube who has his iPod too loud, but if you only ever complain when he’s black, then we’ll draw our conclusions thanks very much.