religion and racism

[tackattack]

news article

Comments? True or false?

[leo-rcc]

I'd like to read the actual paper and not just the abstract. For the moment it seems to me to have merrit, at least for the time being. With increasing globalization and more races entering more diverse religions I think this effect will dilute eventually.

Of course some religions are inherently racist, look at how Mormonism portrays black people as cursed.

[Chocobo]

I'd be interested in the actual paper as well. They're methodology might provide a bit more insight than the article. Overall, I wouldn't be surprised. Most Christians don't have the best track record for being tolerant and it's difficult to be tolerant and have a strict moral code at once. Also, the civil rights movement only made the final progress 50 years ago so there are plenty of racists remaining from then.

On a side note I think this is good progress for fox news.

[fr0d0]

Given the teaching Christians should be less racist but they're just a bunch of people with similar prejudices to everyone else.

[Zen Badger]

For a laugh read the comments underneath.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

news article

Comments? True or false?

Yes.

I'm always bemused by the numbers of people who seem unable to grasp the difference between correlation and causation. My own position is that the cause of racism is xenophobia,which is part of human condition and probably hard wired. It has nothing [directly] to do with religious beliefs or ideology.(or the lack thereof)

[LEDO]

I am shocked Fox would print such an article. It de facto insults their main viewers as being racists. I think the cruelest joke we played on the black man was to give him the white man's bible...Okay. now we are going to learn about the talking snake (snicker, snicker).

[tavarish]

I can't really make a good assessment based on one small paragraph, but it's understandable that some religious people tend to discriminate against those who don't identify with them on a very basic level. Could it also have to do with this study being conducted in California with illegal immigration being a hot topic for the last few decades? Edit: I read it wrong. disregard the last sentence. Seems like they did more secondary research than primary.

I don't think this is necessarily representative of all religious and non-religious people.

[Eilonnwy]

Leo, if you follow the link trail you get to the science journal: http://psr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/1/126

It apparently was a meta-analytical study, which generally tend to make me raise my eyebrow, however I have heard of other studies that come to a somewhat similar conclusion, so yeah, I believe it. But as Padraic pointed out, correlation does not equal causation and it would be interesting to see if there is a causal mechanism that triggers racism and religiosity.

One study, which was discussed at length on Reasonable Doubts, attempted to study latent racism. Since it's not socially acceptable to be racist, a lot of it is hidden in actions and code words. Anyway, this study had people took a survey about religion and then they were asked to to see a movie to study for some made up reason. They had a choice of two rooms, one with a white guy and one with a black guy. Sometimes they would be told the movie is the same so it doesn't matter which room they choose, or that the movie was different and they could choose the one they preferred.

The findings showed that people who were more liberal in their religious beliefs would choose to sit next to the white or black guy with a rate that was statistically insignificant.

What was interesting was the more fundamental people significantly chose the white guy when they had a choice of the movie and could hide their choice with like or dislike of a movie. When the movie was the same they significantly chose the black guy so as not to appear racist. Granted it's hard to specifically say why a person was making the choices, but the statistics were such that was beyond noise. I wish I knew the name of the study so I can post it here. I'll have to try and look it up when I'm not too busy.

Anyway, I think that a part of the reason religious people might be significantly more racist is that when you're believing things on dogma and faith, already you're thinking uncritically, and with that lack of critical thinking it's more likely you would accept things like "Whites are superior" etc...

[leo-rcc]

I did follow that link but it is just an abstract. That's whz I wrote I'd like to read the actual paper and not just the abstract.