I've met a substantial number of sincerely religious people who just could not conceive of another religious person not being a Christian. Why not? They hadn't ever met one, and all of their assumptions and understandings about religion came from their upbringings, which didn't happen to include being around religious non-Christians.
Those folks weren't malevolent or anything - and by and large, they were quite open to being educated. They just hadn't been exposed to situations which brought their assumptions to light yet.
This clearly wouldn't be "racism" per se - it's a function of inexperience - but I think that having unrealized assumptions is pretty common: if all of our beliefs and assumptions were always right, it'd be a boring world.
In the words of Yakko Warner,
It's a great big universe And we're all really puny We're just tiny little specks About the size of Mickey Rooney. It's big and black and inky And we are small and dinky It's a big universe and we're not.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2007-08-05 10:11 pm (UTC)Those folks weren't malevolent or anything - and by and large, they were quite open to being educated. They just hadn't been exposed to situations which brought their assumptions to light yet.
This clearly wouldn't be "racism" per se - it's a function of inexperience - but I think that having unrealized assumptions is pretty common: if all of our beliefs and assumptions were always right, it'd be a boring world.
In the words of Yakko Warner,