Category: racism

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Why don’t people give more to charities?

This quote from Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, really hit home for me.

The obstacle is that poverty is often not personal. If your next-door neighbor’s child was dying and you
could save her for $100, you wouldn’t think twice. But a child 10,000 miles
away whom you have never met, that’s just different.
About 29,000 kids die every day of preventable causes–29,000! These kids
have names and faces, hopes and dreams. Their parents love them as much as
we love our kids. We’ve got to make poverty personal.

"It’s not personal" is the reason people don’t give more and it’s probably the reason they are racist or demeaning to minorities as well.  I know that having friends from many walks of life has really helped me understand the world better.

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Would you prefer a homosexual president or an atheist one?

If you are like most people, you picked the homosexual one, but let us know below!  As James Joyner writes:

A recent Gallup poll
reveals that Americans are much more likely to elect a black man or a
woman president than a Mormon or an old man. More interestingly, they’d
rather be governed by a homosexual than an atheist

I continue to be surprised at how anti-atheist Americans are.  It makes me laugh (in an ironic way) because so many people aren’t actively religious, and if people went around preaching, they’d annoy a good many people – probably more than those that are anit-atheist!

The good news is that things are looking good for women and blacks.  See all the data here:

Yes, would
vote for

No, would not
vote for

%

%

Catholic

95

4

Black

94

5

Jewish

92

7

A woman

88

11

Hispanic

87

12

Mormon

72

24

Married for the third time

67

30

72 years of age

57

42

A homosexual

55

43

An atheist

45

53

What do you think?  Who would you vote for?  Or not vote for?

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Racism against Atheists

It looks like Americans would rather you believe in a god or gods they don’t believe in than have you believe in no god at all.  Atheists identified as America’s most distrusted minority, according to new U of M study : News Releases: UMNnews: U of M..

From a telephone sampling of more than 2,000 households, university researchers found that Americans rate atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in “sharing their vision of American society.” Atheists are also the minority group most Americans are least willing to allow their children to marry.

Since we don’t do such a good job with religious and racial diversity now, I can’t imagine what would happen if the 3% of America that is atheist grows or becomes more publicly visible. 

This also seems strange to me since so many Americans do not go to church or actively participate in a religion.  I can’t imagine that an athesist lives a life that’s very different than a non practicing Christian.  I doubt they even that they have widely different values.