Roof, religion is the cause of racism. OP/ED

[nihilistcat]

Disagree (really seems like a strained argument). Granted, religiosity plays on similar aspects of human nature (e.g. tribalism), but tribalism itself (not its symptoms) is the problem (although, there's many facets to racism in America). In the context of the type of racism we see here in the US, race based tribalism is a phenomena that flows from material circumstances. The pursuit of profits created the incentives underlying slavery, and while slavery eventually became untenable, things like Jim Crow cropped up in part due to fear of retribution (on the part of southern whites) and in part due to the fact that the establishment needs to keep poor people divided in order to sustain itself. So reactionary culture, capitalism, etc, seem more explanatory than religiosity.

We can say that religion promotes tribalism (as does nationalism and ideology and ethnicity and many other things), and so maybe there's a weak relationship between modern religiosity and racism, but frankly I don't see much utility in trying to pick a fight here, when the data is so inconclusive and ambiguous. I think we need to focus on the material circumstances that characterize institutional racism (since that's what actually harms people and feeds the misperceptions [that incidentally ignore context] which, in a vicious cycle, just feeds more racism).