Latest PRRI American Values Survey: White Evangelicals, the GOP Base, Continue to Be Outliers

Jeff Brumley notes that, once again, white evangelicals turn out to be outliers on beliefs about race and American history in PRRI's latest American Values Survey. Brumley counts the ways:

Quote for Day: Intersectionality Is a "Lens, a Prism, for Seeing the Way in Which Various Forms of Inequality Often Operate Together and Exacerbate Each Other"

Kimberlé Crenshaw, who coined the powerful term "intersectionality," talks to TIME Magazine about what she intends with that term:

Wendell Griffen, "Standing with Elaine"

With the permission of my friend Judge (and Reverend) Wendell Griffen, I'd like to share with you a statement he has made recently on his blog The Fierce Urgency of Prophetic Hope. A bit of background: as Wendell's posting notes, in October 1919, hundreds of black men, women, and children were murdered in an event in eastern Arkansas now known as the Elaine Massacre. There are some outstanding historical accounts of what occurred in this massacre — one of the largest race-based massacres in American history. These accounts provide a narrative of what happened to the extent to which historians can piece together what occurred, when so much evidence has been lost or suppressed.

Police Shooting of Stephon Clark and Exoneration of Mark Anthony Conditt: Two Stories We Need to Read Side by Side

Again, how the police chief talks about a young white man who terrorizes a city. Remember how they talked about innocent Black children like Trayvon, Tamir or young men like Freddy Gray. Police: Austin bomber left 25-minute confession on phone @CNN https://t.co/Kvoetv9V13 pic.twitter.com/k0MjK6Dl59

— Sherrilyn Ifill (@Sifill_LDF) March 22, 2018

There are two stories here. These stories unfolded more or less simultaneously in the past several days. We need to read these stories side by side. They are two stories that are part of one story.

Charles Pierce on How "It's Not about Race Because Nothing Ever Is about Race."

Charles Pierce today at his "Politics" blog at Esquire, commenting on the "gerrymandered mess" the Republican-controlled North Carolina legislature has made of the state's election maps, and about the arguments the lawyer representing the Republicans in the legislature is advancing to defend said mess:

Roy Moore Defeated, But Polling Data Tell Us Why We Have Miles and Miles to Go Before We Jubilate — Fusion of White Nationalism and White Christianity Remains Potent Toxic Challenge

Roy Moore rides away on his horse after voting in the Alabama Senate election.

Here's what to watch in today's hotly contested race: https://t.co/iONlmtfGJd #alsen pic.twitter.com/WI2xoJbi6s

— POLITICO (@politico) December 12, 2017

Ezra Klein, "Why Doug Jones’s narrow win is not enough to make me confident about American democracy":

Twitter Responds to NY Times on Overlooked (White) Conservative Voters in Northern California: "Rural Whites Are the Only Folks Who Matter"

Conservative voters in the northernmost reaches of California feel alienated by the state's liberal urban majority https://t.co/N1McsLwq2x pic.twitter.com/bKSuLnFy8N

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) July 3, 2017

My Twitter feed in the last few days has offered a number of incisive responses to the article New York Times published on 3 July (see the tweet above) about how conservative voters in northern California feel alienated from the state's liberal urban enclaves. As a number of respondents have noted, we've seen an endless stream of such articles in the mainstream media since the 2016 elections — the overlooked white working-class voter, the ignored white working-class unemployed miner in West Virginia, the maligned white working-class gay man for Trump: on and on and on ad nauseam.

Arlie Hochschild on Race as "Elephant in the Room" of Trump's America: "Racial Resentment Lies at the Very Heart" of the Story of Trump Voters

For the San Francisco Chronicle yesterday, David Talbot interviewed Arlie Hochschild, author of the acclaimed book Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. Hochschild's book is an account of her attempt, as a liberal social scientist from Berkeley, to sojourn among and understand people in south Louisiana's bayou country who appear consistently to vote against their own economic self-interest, as they vote Republican election after election. 

White Churches and American Racism: Three Recent Statements — "Among Evangelicals, Race Matters, and Race Doesn't Matter"*

4 in 5 white evangelicals, 3 in 5 white Catholics and Mormons — "pro-life" voters — brought us the Trump nightmare.

I will not forget.

— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) May 20, 2017

Three statements that I've read in the past day or so, noting the extent to which white evangelicals (I'd add white Catholics) are a serious part of the problem, when it comes to addressing matters of racial injustice in the U.S. — and not a part of the solution:

"People in Control in Gilead Aren't 'Really Interested in Religion; They’re Interested in Power'": Notes on Atwood's Dystopian Handmaid's Tale and Today's News

To complement the notes I have just posted about Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, here are some observations from my news-and-commentary reading in the past day or two:

Some Notes on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Intersectionality: Class Privilege Connects to Racial Privilege Connects to Heterosexism Connects to Misogyny Connects to Religion

A fascinating aspect of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, especially in the Hulu series that we continue watching, is how it weaves together issues of feminism, race, heterosexism-homophobia, class privilege, and religion. If anything, the t.v. series is making the interconnection of these issues even stronger.

More from Frances Fitzgerald's The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America: Race and the Shift of White Evangelicals to Republican Party

And, as a complement to what I have just posted about Trump's analysis of the Civil War and Andrew Jackson and how both reflect white supremacist ideology, here aresome more excerpts from Frances FitzGerald, The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America (NY: Simon & Schuster, 2017).  These are not in the least unrelated to Trump's remarks about the Civil War and Jackson:

Tired Old "Discussion" of Democrats As Anti-Religious after 2016 Elections: Valuable Recent Commentary

I've never seen a group of people so happy to do such evil as take healthcare away from 30 million Americans. pic.twitter.com/kJJv5vdTNt

— CoryBooker2020 (@CBooker2020) January 5, 2017

Following a presidential election in which 4 in 5 white evangelicals and 3 in 5 white Catholics and Mormons placed Donald Trump in the White House, claiming "pro-life" intent as they did so, there is a predictable "conversation" now in the mainstream media about the purported tone-deafness of the Democratic party and liberals to religion. This "conversation" takes place repeatedly in the mainstream media following Republican political victories. It reinforces the assumptions that 1) Republicans own religion, 2) religion is to be equated with its right-wing iterations, 3) the religious views and practices of people who do not equate religion with its right-wing iterations should be ignored as the media discuss religion in American politics, and 4) non-right-wing iterations of religion are to be kept in check by the mainstream media.

PRRI Releases 2016 American Values Survey, The Divide Over America's Future: 1950 or 2050? Some Initial Takeaways (Gender, Race, Religion, and Politics)

Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) has just released its annual American Values Survey. This year's report is entitled The Divide Over America’s Future: 1950 or 2050? Some important takeaways that have to do with topics we've been discussing here:

Hot Off the Presses: More Valuable Resources Discussing Interplay of Religion, Race, Gender in U.S. Election Cycle

The valuable articles about the "religion" vote in the current U.S. elections keep coming out, and I'll keep sharing them with you as they come across my desk. Here are items I've noticed in the past day or so, dealing with issues of religion, race, and gender as the election is being discussed:

Droppings from the Catholic Birdcage: "Trump Leads Clinton by 13 Points Among White Catholics"

Catholic for Choice has just released the results of a new national poll (pdf file) conducted for that group by Beldon Russonello Strategists. Key findings: 

The "Because Freedom" Argument of (Some) American Catholics Justifying Denial of Goods and Services to LGBT Folks: A Consideration of Moral Parameters

So a man logs into my Facebook page to inform me that he and whatever business he wants to operate have every right in the world to choose to whom to sell or deny goods, to whom to provide or not offer services. This is America. It's a free country. Butt out of my business and my freedom.

Liberal Tolerance Not All It's Cracked Up to Be: How White Millennial Attitudes about Race Parallel Discussion of Contraception in Catholic Church

It's interesting, isn't it, that claims of greater tolerance on the part of the younger generation today don't necessarily translate into claims of any active concern for or solidarity with people on the margins — as in the contraception debate in the Catholic church, which I discussed yesterday. Younger "liberal" Catholics often say that they're totally over magisterial teaching about sexuality, and are completely open to the idea that everyone should have access to contraceptives.

Brief Takes from Week's News: Race Matters

Brief takes from the week's news on race matters (and on how race matters), in light of the stories of Cliven Bundy and Donald Sterling (which is to say, brief takes on the interplay of race, gender, class, and politics in American culture today):

End-of-Week News Snippets: Matters of Gender, Race, Moral Analysis of Economic Priorities of Government, Etc.

End-of-week news snippets about matters ranging from gender to race to moral analysis of the economic priorities of the American (and global) economies: