Racism is linked to Religious dogmatism

[ensho]

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/racism_is_linked_to_religious_dogmatism/#When:14:26:48Z


Religious people can be racist, and that's not news. But are they more likely to be racist than non-religious people? A new study now confirms this hypothesis.

The February issue of Personality and Social Psychology Review has published a meta-analysis of 55 independent studies conducted in the United States which considers surveys of over 20,000 mostly Christian participants. Religious congregations generally express more prejudiced views towards other races. Furthermore, the more devout the community, the greater the racism.
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and the greater child sexual abuse

[PerpetuallyDazed]

1. Dr. Bob Altemeyer explains this very thoroughly in "The Authoritarians" (ebook)

available online. http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

It really extends beyond simple racism. Religious communities reject "diversity" at higher rates than other communities.

[DirkGently]

2. Religion can be used to rationalize good OR bad

ideas, I think. But this finding makes sense. Given that religion itself is a tradition, a lot of religion is concerned with preserving traditional beliefs and thus traditional thought. Racism is definitely a traditional thought -- witness all the "Sell your daughters" advice in the Bible. Edit: Oh wait -- that's slavery and misognyny. :) Still, fear of "the other," the infidel, what have you is a species of insular thought religion seems to hold on to pretty firmly.

Parochialism is a frequent element of religion too, I think. There's an element of wanting homogeneous thought, homogeneous modes of speech, dress, etc. Comforting to a degree, but also limiting. Everything different is a threat. Culture itself has the same tendency, and religion seems like it's sort of the centermost core of that conservative, keep-to-ourselves-and-our-'traditions' impulse. So it makes sense racism would be a corollary to "devout" religion.

[safeinOhio]

10. I want that for a bumper sticker

"Parochialism is a frequent element of religion"

Thank you Dirk, it would have the people in my town scratching their collective heads.

[havocmom]

3. ah, our observations and theories are getting quantified

And I agree with your last statement. That has been my observation and I have had the good fortune of living among very diverse populations over my lifetime.

[Critters2]

4. Religions are based on scapegoating...building a sense of community

identity and unity by excluding some from the community. We know who we are, because we know who we are not. This exclusion is ritualized and codified into religious ritual. The exclusion predates the religious formation, not the other way around.

Rene Girard has written volumes on this.

[struggle4progress]

5. Why Don’t We Practice What We Preach? A Meta-Analytic Review of Religious Racism

Personality and Social Psychology Review, Vol. 14, No. 1, 126-139 (2010)

Deborah L. Hall <Duke University>, David C. Matz <Augsburg College>, and Wendy Wood <University of Southern California> ...

Abstract .... a strong religious in-group identity was associated with derogation of racial out-groups .... religious racism is tied to .. social conformity and respect for tradition .... individuals who were religious for reasons of conformity and tradition expressed racism that declined in recent years with the decreased societal acceptance of overt racial discrimination ...

Americans’ religious experience is marked by a color line .... The participants in the reviewed studies were primarily White and Christian, and the racism assessed was primarily toward Blacks. Our review began in 1964, the year in which the Civil Rights Act was passed ... Consistent with our hypotheses, greater religious identification, greater extrinsic religiosity, and greater religious fundamentalism were all positively related to racism. Greater intrinsic religiosity and greater quest were negatively related to racism, a relation that reflected racial tolerance ... Religious fundamentalism is associated with a rigid, dogmatic cognitive style that preferences one truth and way of being over others and thereby promotes in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. In support, the positive correlation between fundamentalism and prejudice disappeared after controlling for authoritarianism ...

<link to journal: http://psr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/126>

The authors aggregate a number of studies conducted over many decades to examine the correlations of different "religious dimensions" with racism of "white" Christians against "blacks." Since "white" and "black" are social rather than scientific constructs, the study is a study of social phenomena.

"Religious dimensions" include features putatively relevant to individual motives for professing Christianity, including dimensions such as "extrinsic religiosity," "religious fundamentalism," "quest," and "beliefs/Christian orthodoxy" (among others). "Beliefs/Christian orthodoxy" seems unrelated to racism.

[Jim__]

12. Did you read the article?

I can see where you get the quote from the abstract. But, I can't find any of the rest of the article online (without a sign-in or purchase of the article). Did the article contain this sentence: In support, the positive correlation between fundamentalism and prejudice disappeared after controlling for authoritarianism ...?

If so, then the headline seems to misrepresent the actual findings - if I understand that sentence (I'm not sure of the overall context), then religion appears to be incidental to the racism.

[struggle4progress]

16. Yes, everything above the link is directly from the article. The stuff in italics

is mine. The first author is a graduate student; the second is chair of the psychology department at a private Lutheran college; and the third is on the faculty at USC and studies people's motives. The paper distinguishes five or six different aspects of what might be called religion and looks at studies over about a forty-five year period to see how the different aspects of religion are related to anti-black racism among white Christians. The method is to try to piece together 55 different studies over the period. Social attitudes have changed considerably over the years: at the time of the early studies, racism was much more acceptable in some circles than it is now. Some motives for being religious seem to be correlated with racist attitudes (but less today than decades ago); others seem not to be. For example, according to the authors, fundamentalist motives appear to be correlated with racist attitudes, while mere belief in Christian orthodoxy has no predictive value whatsoever with respect to racism

The OP does misrepresent the paper

[Jim__]

18. Thanks - n/t.

[troubledamerican]

6. Breaking News: Water is wet

K&R

[Goblinmonger]

7. It all depends on what you mean by wet.

Why do you broadbrush against all water? Did you almost drown as a child--that would explain your obvious hatred of water and bigoted attitude toward it. You can't judge all water by your small sample.

Am I missing anything?

[troubledamerican]

8. :)

[PassingFair]

9. Modern-day tribes.

[AlecBGreen]

11. racist fundies

should re-read their bible.

"You shall treat the alien who resides with you no differently than the natives born among you; have the same love for him as for yourself; for you too were once aliens..." --Leviticus 19:34

[iris27]

14. Leviticus? Don't you know the only verses they care about in

that book are the ones against Them Damn Homos? :) I don't know many fundies who have sworn off shrimp, for instance.

"Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams, you may eat any that have fins and scales. But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales--whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water--you are to detest." Levicitus 11: 9-10

[AlecBGreen]

15. yup, very selective in what they see and what they dont

[iris27]

13. As a general trend, that's sort of a "duh" finding.

The more dogmatic and ritualistic the faith, the more likely its members are to be the sort with very black-and-white, us-versus-them type of thinking. I'm sure you'll find more racist opinions among fundie evangelicals than 'social justice' UCC Christians or Unitarians.

For non-believers, there's probably also an element where, once you've examined and ended up going against conventional thought in one area (religion), you're more likely to look closely at other things that are accepted as general knowledge...like stereotypes.

[RagAss]

17. Duh