Tag: Demography

Data from PRRI show that white evangelicals consistently exhibit the highest support for Trump and most conservative viewpoints of all religious groups. In my book, which included analysis from a 2016 survey my colleagues and I conducted of more than 10,000 people, I show that support for Trump was higher among non-evangelical whites than among evangelical black, Latino, or Asian Americans. That is, the most religiously conservative non-whites tend to be less conservative than whites who don’t identify as religiously conservative. This fact shows that conservative political attitudes are not just a function of religion. Similarly, Latino evangelicals tend to be more conservative on abortion than white evangelicals, but much less likely to support Trump or a Republican House member. A middle-aged, white evangelical man who was interviewed for my book said he only thought about race “because I’m forced to … We’re forced to think about things in racial terms. But, political scientist Ryan Burge’s analysis of a large-scale study of more than 60,000 people shows that young white evangelicals identify with the Republican Party at about the same rate as their older counterparts. Over the course of my research, my team and I visited 60 evangelical churches and interviewed more than 70 white, black, Latino and Asian American evangelicals. She argues that religious affiliation and identity are not “impervious to politics.” Rather, “partisanship can profoundly shape identification with and engagement in the religious sphere.” The bottom line is that the racial divides and racial anxieties we see in evangelical America are not so different from the views of white Americans more generally. Hence, their defenses may be easily raised by “the War on Christmas.” Narratives of persecution have primed them to expect a broad cultural assault, despite the fact that white Christians face the least religious persecution of any religious group in the United States.

Over at The Week, Damon Linker has written a widely read essay pushing back against the liberal conventional wisdom that “demography will come to their rescue.” In other words, just wait long enough for America to become a minority-white nation, and Democratic ascendancy is guaranteed. Linker says “don’t bet on it.” He rightly notes that non-white citizens hardly constitute a homogeneous demographic, and he rightly notes that ethnic categories may not remain stable over the decades, but the most important aspect of his essay is the warning in the latter half — that the effort to forge non-white solidarity will lead to “anti-white identity politics.” In other words, the “emerging Democratic majority” may never come to pass: Unless, that is, liberals can convince the non-white members of their current electoral coalition to begin thinking of themselves, first and foremost, as “people of color” united by their antipathy to, and in their oppression by, white America. If racism is defined, in part, by the tendency of whites to view everyone but themselves as “not white,” then this would be a form of counter-racism in which non-whites positively affirm as a politically potent identity what was once treated as a form of stigma. Linker’s essay reminds me of a recent Remnant podcast with Jonah Goldberg and Michael Brendan Dougherty. I’m paraphrasing, but Michael made the point that the Left is simultaneously crowing about the decline of the white voter while scolding any white voter who racializes their politics. A message that essentially declares, “Ha! White people your time is over!” and “It’s racist for you to care” is unsustainable outside progressive academies or corporations. To ignore the role of race and racism in American history (or the American present) is to ignore reality. Linker writes that “liberals risk actively antagonizing (and hence galvanizing against them) what will remain for some significant time to come the single-largest demographic group in the United States.” He calls that foolish. I choose a stronger word.