Race and gender and religion

Amer­i­ca is a very reli­gious coun­try, and has been for a long time.  Regard­less of broad cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tions and trends in the cul­ture wars, about the same num­ber of peo­ple say reli­gion is “very impor­tant” in their lives today as 35 years ago.

Oth­er mea­sure of reli­gios­i­ty shift, as Gallup points out.  “Self-report­ed church or syn­a­gogue mem­ber­ship has drift­ed slow­ly down­ward over the past 70 years,” they found in 2007, a year when per­cep­tion of reli­gion’s influ­ence in soci­ety plum­met­ed.  Con­fi­dence in orga­nized reli­gion has dropped by a third since the ’70s.

But what­ev­er peo­ple might think of reli­gion, how much they think soci­ety val­ues reli­gion, how influ­en­tial they think a deity might be in the world around them, or how they take part in reli­gious prac­tices, Amer­i­cans con­sis­tent­ly believe in God and think reli­gion is important.

That fact has inspired a lot of fight­ing over how advo­cates of evo­lu­tion edu­ca­tion in par­tic­u­lar, and advo­cates of a skep­ti­cal mind­set more broad­ly, should deal with reli­gious Americans.

On one hand, there are folks who say that reli­gion is ubiq­ui­tous in the Amer­i­can pub­lic, and antag­o­niz­ing reli­gious folks by attack­ing reli­gion just makes it hard­er to con­vey a mes­sage about sci­ence.  On the oth­er hand, you have peo­ple who hold that reli­gion is anti­thet­i­cal to sci­ence and so should be attacked.  The first group gen­er­al­ly dis­putes the claim of an absolute oppo­si­tion between sci­ence and reli­gion, but that’s a top­ic for oth­er days.

This ques­tion is relat­ed to, but tends not to be linked with, broad­er dis­cus­sions about diver­si­ty in sci­ence and in skep­ti­cism.  Skep­ti­cal con­fer­ences have been get­ting bet­ter about acknowl­edg­ing that half of Amer­i­ca is female, and reflect­ing that diver­si­ty in the lists of speak­ers, and think­ing about how to get a more sex­u­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive audi­ence.  As a gen­er­al mat­ter, sci­ence skews male, though that varies by dis­ci­pline, and the gen­der gap is a top­ic of reg­u­lar dis­cus­sion.  Skep­ti­cal events and the com­mu­ni­ty of sci­en­tists are also notably white.  The skep­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ty’s response to the racial dif­fer­en­tial has­n’t been as force­ful as it has been with sex and gen­der, but there’s gen­uine concern.

It occurs to me that the dis­cus­sions about race and gen­der may not be so dis­tinct from the dis­cus­sion of reli­gion.  First, because these are all mat­ters of per­son­al iden­ti­ty, and it isn’t unrea­son­able to eval­u­ate com­mu­ni­ties based on their will­ing­ness to exclude cer­tain peo­ple based on deep mat­ters of iden­ti­ty.  Sec­ond, because reli­gios­i­ty is linked with gen­der and with race in com­plex ways.

It’s a com­mon find­ing in pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys that women are far more like­ly to be reli­gious than men, and they express that reli­gious iden­ti­ty dif­fer­ent­ly.  Gallup sum­ma­rizes:

A moun­tain of Gallup sur­vey data attests to the idea that women are more reli­gious than men, hold their beliefs more firm­ly, prac­tice their faith more con­sis­tent­ly, and work more vig­or­ous­ly for the con­gre­ga­tion. In fact, gen­der-based dif­fer­ences in respons­es to reli­gious ques­tions are far more pro­nounced than those between any oth­er demo­graph­ic cat­e­gories, such as age, edu­ca­tion lev­el, or geo­graph­ic region. The ten­den­cy toward high­er reli­gios­i­ty among women has man­i­fest­ed over sev­en decades of sci­en­tif­ic polling, and church mem­ber­ship fig­ures indi­cate that it prob­a­bly exist­ed for many decades pri­or to the advent of sur­vey research in the mid-1930s.

Why the dif­fer­ence?  Some offer rea­sons root­ed in evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy, oth­ers point to dif­fer­ences in gen­der social­iza­tion, to dif­fer­ences in risk aver­sion, and to oth­er social fac­tors.  Regard­less of the caus­es, women are more like­ly to believe in reli­gious and spir­i­tu­al phe­nom­e­na, to attend reli­gious ser­vices, to belong to reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, to read reli­gious texts, to see reli­gion as offer­ing answers to prob­lems, to find reli­gion impor­tant in their lives, to be com­mit­ted to their reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty, and to be engaged with their reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty.  While male belief that reli­gion is impor­tant has declined over the last decade, women have found reli­gion more impor­tant.

There are, of course, big­ger rea­sons why women often feel uncom­fort­able in sci­en­tif­ic and skep­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ties, but I won­der if a per­cep­tion of reli­gious intol­er­ance plays some role as well.

Sim­i­lar­ly, data from OK Cupid gives an inter­est­ing look at the role reli­gion plays in per­son­al iden­ti­ty in African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties.  OK Cupid is a free online dat­ing site, and does the world a great ser­vice by pub­licly crunch­ing num­bers from its enor­mous data­base of demo­graph­ic data their mem­bers; it’s not a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple, OK Cupid mem­bers tend to be urban, younger, and of course sin­gle.  A cou­ple years ago, they looked at the dif­fer­ent lan­guage peo­ple from dif­fer­ent races used to describe them­selves, and found a sur­pris­ing dif­fer­ence in the role of religion.

In a ran­dom sam­ple of 526,000 pro­files, they found that African Amer­i­cans were at least twice as like­ly to men­tion reli­gious iden­ti­ties (God, Jesus, church, etc.) as oth­er racial groups.  This effect vast­ly out­strips gen­der dif­fer­ences.  One in six pro­files from oth­er races men­tioned reli­gion, while 2 in 5 pro­files by African Amer­i­cans did so.  “God-fear­ing” was among the most com­mon­ly used phras­es that shows up dis­tinct­ly in African Amer­i­can profiles.

This is impor­tant for two rea­sons.  It reflects gen­uine dif­fer­ences in reli­gios­i­ty.  Gallup finds that 53% of African Amer­i­cans con­sid­er them­selves “very reli­gious,” com­pared to 39% of whites and 29% of Asian Amer­i­cans; whites are more that twice as like­ly as African Amer­i­cans to iden­ti­fy as non-reli­gious.  But the dif­fer­ence between a poll response and a dat­ing pro­file is that the lat­ter shows how peo­ple see them­selves, and how they want oth­ers to see them.  The OK Cupid data tell us that African Amer­i­cans aren’t just more reli­gious per­son­al­ly, but that reli­gion plays a greater role as a social cue in that com­mu­ni­ty.  Dat­ing pro­files are all about sig­nal­ing what sort of per­son you are and what sort of per­son you want to be seen as; OK Cupid notes that Asian Amer­i­cans tend to use “I’m sim­ple as their go-to self-descrip­tion,” com­pared with “black men’s I am cool and Lati­nos’ I’m a fun­ny guy.”  The heavy empha­sis on reli­gion sug­gests that the African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty sees reli­gion as a mea­sure of per­son­al virtue to a greater degree than the rest of Amer­i­can soci­ety.  And the rest of Amer­i­can soci­ety sees reli­gion as a very impor­tant sig­nal of per­son­al virtue!  This year is the first when more than half of Amer­i­can vot­ers claim they’d vote for an athe­ist can­di­date for president.

Giv­en this, it would­n’t sur­prise me to find that an unfor­tu­nate (and incor­rect) per­cep­tion of sci­ence or skep­ti­cism as anti-reli­gion would play a role in the gen­der and racial dis­par­i­ties that both sci­en­tists and skep­tics rec­og­nize and want to reverse in their com­mu­ni­ties.  Being more open to reli­gious peo­ple might help skep­tics and sci­ence advo­cates more effec­tive­ly reach out to under­rep­re­sent­ed communities.

So much not to like

The AP reports a dude went to the head­quar­ters of hate group based in Wash­ing­ton, DC, and shot a secu­ri­ty guard:

Fed­er­al author­i­ties say Floyd Lee Corkins II told a guard at the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, “I don’t like your pol­i­tics” before shoot­ing him in the arm. The guard and oth­ers helped sub­due Corkins, who was tak­en into custody. …

Author­i­ties found a box of ammu­ni­tion and 15 Chick-fil‑A sand­wich­es in his backpack.

Now, I under­stand that – as with the last mon­th’s mass shoot­ings in Auro­ra, CO, the Sikh gur­d­wara in Wis­con­sin, and near the Texas A&M cam­pus – the time is not right to talk about mak­ing it hard­er to get guns or ammunition.

Until that time, can we, at least, impose a wait­ing peri­od on Chick-fil‑A purchases?

Also, two spe­cial comments:

• Secu­ri­ty guards don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly share the pol­i­tics of those they guard.
• “I don’t like your pol­i­tics” is nev­er, ever, a rea­son to shoot someone.

The sec­ond should be obvi­ous, but bears men­tion­ing, since it seems not to be obvi­ous to people.

The first is impor­tant because it’s often folks like the secu­ri­ty guards or jan­i­to­r­i­al staff who bear the brunt of the abuse at protests.  When peo­ple are camped out in front of an office they find objec­tion­able, whether they’re object­ing to med­ical pro­ce­dures per­formed inside or the fore­clo­sure orders being issued there, the eas­i­est peo­ple for them to has­sle actu­al­ly have no say in the issue.  Folks like jan­i­tors, secu­ri­ty guards, and peo­ple mak­ing deliv­er­ies can’t decide whether a com­pa­ny will for­give delin­quent mort­gages, or change which med­ical pro­ce­dures it pro­vides, or alter the com­pa­ny’s stance on seg­re­ga­tion.  Blocked door­ways or van­dal­ized build­ings may send a sig­nal to some exec­u­tive some­place, but at the end of the day, the guards at the bar­ri­cad­ed door aren’t mak­ing pol­i­cy, and they and the under­paid jan­i­tors who have to clean off the graf­fi­ti are part of the pub­lic on whose behalf pro­test­ers are protest­ing.  Mak­ing them work hard­er does­n’t force any­one at the top of the org. chart to do the same.

So, many tac­tics that seem like they might be rea­son­able, real­ly require care­ful plan­ning if they’re to be used, to avoid plac­ing most of the bur­den of the protest on the wrong shoul­ders.  That’s a les­son that applies across the polit­i­cal spectrum.

The horror of Horowitz

Many cru­el things can be said about the men­dac­i­ty of David Horowitz. Few of them were not already said by the bril­liant Michael Bérubé, but he-of-the-accents does­n’t seem to blog any more, while D. Ho. remains as pro­lif­ic as ever in his search for Reds in the Ivory Tow­er.  RightWing­Watch observes Horowitz first sug­gest­ing that Antho­ny Wein­er is a s3kr1t Mus­sul­man*, and then that Holo­caust sur­vivor George Soros is a Com­mu­nist Nazi, or some­thing.  He told hate group leader Tim Wildmon:

George Soros, who is an evil man, who has evil designs on this coun­try, once said, he said he aspired to be the con­science of mankind. He knows that he’s a cor­rupt busi­ness­man who has caused a lot of pain and so he redeems him­self by being the cham­pi­on of the pro­gres­sive future. That’s what it does for them. If you look at his­to­ry you will see that all these ‘isms’—communism, social­ism, Nazism—they all emerge after Dar­win, that is after the decline of orga­nized reli­gion. They replace the reli­gious vision of a redemp­tion in the next life with a com­mu­nist vision with a redemp­tion in this life, and that is why they are so bloody dangerous.

This is fair­ly stan­dard wingnut­tery, but some­what fun­ny to see from Horowitz.  Horowitz is, after all, a pro­po­nent of a so-called “aca­d­e­m­ic bill of rights” which would func­tion as aca­d­e­m­ic affir­ma­tive action for con­ser­v­a­tives.  His argu­ment is that con­ser­v­a­tives are under-rep­re­sent­ed in the acad­e­my because mean com­mu­nist, Jew­ish, fem­i­nist, athe­ist pro­fes­sors exclude con­ser­v­a­tives from their ranks. 

One stan­dard riposte is to argue that con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als gen­er­al­ly don’t mea­sure up well against intel­lec­tu­als in gen­er­al.  There are few­er of them – the argu­ment goes – and those tend to be of low­er qual­i­ty, so they don’t advance in academia. 

And if we want­ed to point to evi­dence for this propo­si­tion, we could eas­i­ly point to Horow­itz’s his­tor­i­cal claim above.  Appar­ent­ly “the decline of orga­nized reli­gion” coin­cides with “Dar­win,” and com­mu­nism and social­ism and Nazism came after Dar­win so, post hoc ergo propter hoc, Dar­win caused the decline of reli­gion and the rise of com­mu­nism, social­ism, fas­cism, and Roseanne Barr.

Even if post hoc ergo propter hoc weren’t a log­i­cal fal­la­cy, this argu­ment falls apart.  Social­is­m’s mod­ern roots can be traced at least to Fouri­er’s ideas, which he began pub­lish­ing a year before Dar­win was born.  Com­mu­nism can’t have start­ed lat­er than 1848, when Marx and Engels pub­lished the Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo; it would be 10 years before Dar­win pre­sent­ed any­thing more rev­o­lu­tion­ary than a tax­on­o­my of bar­na­cles.  This isn’t “after this, there­fore because of this,” it’s “before this, there­fore because of this.”

Also, are we to believe that George Soros is both an inter­na­tion­al financier and a communist?

* Yes, Wein­er must be an apos­tate because he’s mar­ried to a Mus­lim woman who also hap­pens to be deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clin­ton.  Horowitz rea­sons (if we can apply that verb here):

Antho­ny Wein­er is a Jew. So accord­ing to Mus­lim law, either Antho­ny Wein­er has secret­ly con­vert­ed to Islam or Huma Abe­din has been giv­en a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion to mar­ry a Jew so she can infil­trate our government.

He’s a Jew, so he must not be a Jew or, like mag­nets, he and Abe­din would be unable to join togeth­er.  Make this man a professor.