Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: How does religion influence Americans' perceptions of other racial and ethnic groups? In a society stratified according to race and ethnicity, such questions are intertwined with perceptions of racial and ethnic inequality and preferred solutions to such inequality. Only a few studies have explored the question posed above. Those studies have concentrated mostly on understandings of African-American inequality, and particularly on the effects of religious conservatism on Whites' views. In this paper, we use data from a national random sample telephone survey conducted by the American Mosaic Project(N=2081)in the summer of 2003 to explore religious effects on Whites' views of African-American inequality. But we also broaden the focus of previous work in two ways. First, we examine religious effects on Whites' views of other racial and ethnic minorities. Second, we compare and contrast the views of Conservative Protestants, liberal Protestants, and Catholics. This is the beginning of an analysis that will also, in the next stage, compare how religion shapes views of race, ethnicity, and inequality for Whites, African-Americans, and Hispanic Americans. Through these analyses we hope to generate a broader theoretical account of the way that religion shapes Americans' understandings of stratification and racial/ethnic identity in our society.