[alicebot-aiethics] harassment

[Noel Bush]

This is bad news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/national/14ISLA.html

It's clear that many Americans, far from being "above" religion or
ethnic nationalism, indeed harbor the same kinds of associated
discriminatory attitudes that have ripped apart other nations.  The
biggest danger to civil rights is the failure to acknowledge the
psychological presence of the religious, ethnic and nationalistic
dimensions to this.  Attacking people because of their religion, creed,
ethnicity or skin color is every bit as wrong -- in principle though not
in "magnitude" (whatever that can mean) -- as waging a jihad against the
US.  The great tragedy is that many Americans feel that they are "above"
all these concerns, because the US is not religiously-identified.
Somehow a confusion in these people's minds prevents them from
understanding when they are acting out of the same base instincts,
simply because they are not "Christians" but "Americans".  The latter
seems to be a cover for a very mixed-up version of the former, even for
people who do not identify themselves with Christianity or any other
religion.  The "official" American brand of nationalism appears to be a
mutated and unselfconscious form of Christianity, despite the fact that
its citizens have many creeds and many faiths.

Faith and ethnic heritage may be private matters or may be ways of
identifying a nation, or anywhere in between -- it's different in
different parts of the world.  But in no case do they constitute a
proper "interface" through which nations or their citizens ought to
interact.  In this respect I think that President Bush's and other's
repeated calls for "prayer" are quite damaging, because they incite
these sorts of religious and even ethnic-nationalist sentiments without
acknowledging that fact.

People were killed violently; the people and states who engineered this
must be punished.  That isn't a religious, nationalist or ethnic issue.
It's an issue of crime and punishment.

Mourning for the dead is a matter for individuals to decide, separately
or as part of their own communities of faith.  The President of the USA
isn't supposed to be a religious leader, and ought not to confuse the
issue of punishing those responsible for this atrocity, with the issue
of mourning for those who have been lost.  A government official calling
for "prayer" is indeed assisting this confusion.  People who promote
this kind of confusion will ultimately hold some culpability for the
attacks on innocent people of Middle Eastern descent who are attacked
based on blanket prejudice.