The AVA is based on 40,000 telephone interviews conducted across all 50 states. On average, the study found that 63 percent of Americans acknowledged “a lot” of discrimination against immigrants, 57 percent against black people, and 58 percent against gay and lesbian people. Overall, about two-thirds of Americans see discrimination against at least one minority group as an issue, with 42 percent identifying discrimination as an issue among all three groups.
But among white Christians, those figures dropped significantly: Only 36 percent of white evangelicals, 50 percent of white mainline Protestants, and 47 percent of white Catholics reported perceiving discrimination against black people (the survey did not ask about other races). For contrast, 86 percent of black Protestants reported perceiving “a lot” of discrimination against black people in America, as did 67 percent of the religiously unaffiliated. Even higher proportions of Buddhists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Unitarians reported discrimination. [...]
Jones noted that among white Christians, there’s "a difference in degree, though not a difference in kind” between the responses of mainline Protestants, who have traditionally been more progressive, and white evangelicals. To explain these differences, Jones pointed to historic divisions between these camps in both geography (mainline Protestants tend to be clustered in the Northeast; evangelicals in the South) and positions over race issues (many mainline Protestant churches were deeply involved in both the abolitionist and civil rights movements, while many Southern evangelical churches had roots in pro-slavery and segregationist causes). [...]
Many white evangelicals who do not perceive discrimination against minority groups in fact perceive discrimination against themselves, Jones said, referring to a question in a previous PRRI study about whether discrimination against white people was as serious a cultural problem as that against black people. White evangelicals overwhelmingly said it was. “[White evangelicals are] more likely to see discrimination against themselves than against minority groups, and that is, I think, a reflection of that sense that they really have lost their power, their influence, they’ve lost the cultural center and the demographic dominance they once had — that, oh, no, we’re the ones being persecuted,” he said.
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