religious bigotry = racism

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Bigotry against religious minorities is always just a thinly-veiled cover for racism, and I'm tired of people pretending that it's not.

If a Mexican Catholic or Arab Muslim or Indian Sikh (just to give a few examples) family moves into an all-white neighborhood, and some of those neighbors are distrustful of them, said neighbors will always say some s**t like "uuuhhh it's because we're Methodists" but come on, we all know the real reason they're afraid.

People use religion as an excuse for being a bigot or to abuse their kids.

How does this theory explain “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland?

One form of bigotry can masequarade as another kind of bigotry. Or two kinds can bolster each other.

Mom was talking about growing up in 1930s Colorado and talked about how her neighbors "wouldnt be SEEN talking to a Baptist". Baffled, I asked "what did they think was so bad about Baptists, and their theology?". She replied that "Baptists were considered blue collar, or lower class". Apparently, it wasnt about religion, but about class snobbery. Whatever.

So sometimes what you're saying is true. But not always.

Jews fled pogroms in Czarist Russia to settle in America where there were never pogroms against Jews.

But Americans did have pogroms against the Mormons. So many that we drove the Mormons out of our country and forced them to settle in Utah (a then empty desert nominally belonging to Mexico). But the founders of Mormonism, like Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young, and most of its membership were all White Anglo Saxon Americans of north European descent. Racially indistinquishable from their mainstream Protestant American oppressor neighbors.

So in the case of Mormonism you have pure religious conflict, caused by theological heresy (along with some weird customs like polygamy) that have nothing to do with race.

Actually that IS a tribal/ethnic conflict. The Protestant "Irish" are really Scots brought in by the English as exploited serfs. The White "n****rs" of the English. The native Celtic Irish were the White wild Indians who had to be fought and driven off the land. Ireland was sort of the testing ground for the later British exploitation of America. The descendants of the two groups in present day Ireland latch onto religion as a badge of tribal identity. The Scotch-Irish latch on to Protestantism for the same reason they latch on to loyalty to the crown. The Irish-Irish latch on to Catholicism to rally against assimilation by England. So even though Scotch-Irish and Irish-Irish look like much alike racially they are seperate "tribes", or ethnic groups (like Greeks and Turks).

My dad told me how our family back during WWI took a lot of heat for not just being German Americans, but also because they were Lutherans; a Protestant church often associated with Germans and Germany, and thus suspected to hold questionable loyalties.
Not racism, but to be sure religious bigotry associated with national origin directed at fellow Americans.

Tribal identity is not necessarily racial identity both groups are white. “White n****rs” is a metaphor.

I didnt say they were of a "different race". I said that the two groups are different ethnic groups. Ethnicity isnt exactly "race", but its not pure religion either. The Protestants and Catholics in Ireland are like Serbs and Croatians, Hutus and Tutsies, Greeks and Turks, etc. My use of the N word was not literal, but to exress the contrasting roles of the two groups. The Irish-Irish became the target of genocide (much like the Native Americans), while the Scotch-Irish (ancestors of the Protestant Irish)became the exploited labor.

I would say that religious bigotry is often rooted in racism, but not always.

For example, new religious movements such a Wicca, whose adherents are mostly white, have encountered quite a bit of bigotry that wasn't rooted in racism at all.

Naturalplastic is right. The troubles in Northern Ireland are an ethnic conflict. It doesn't matter if the Scots-Irish (the 'Protestants') and Gaelic-Irish (the 'Catholics') are both white; they are two different ethnic groups as part of the larger white race, just like the Serbs and Croatians. I'm not sure about the bit about the Scots-Irish being treated like serfs by the English, but I agree with the main point.

Wrong.

Racial bigotry is racism (practiced by racists).

Religious bigotry is religionism (practiced by religionists).

And "Islamophobia isn't racism because Islam isn't a race", right?

The OP said, "Bigotry against religious minorities is always just a thinly-veiled cover for racism". That is what I am reacting to

"Islam" is not a race.

Islamophobia is bigotry against Muslims, regardless of their race.

• Islam (n): the religious faith of Muslims including belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet.

Anti-Semitism is prejudice against Semitic peoples, regardless of their religion.

• Semite (n): a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs; or their descendants.

As the majority of Muslims are brown or black, I can see where racial prejudice comes in in regard to Islamophobia.

I can see where islamophobia could be mistaken for racism; but I know it is only coincidental.