Anti-minority discrimination spikes when confidence in American institutions is low

Evidence

Ironically, while social discrimination against religious minorities is politically activated when confidence in America’s institutions is at a low ebb, religious minorities’ assertion of their rights through a defense of constitutional liberties speaks to the vitality of America’s democratic institutions and their transformative role in assimilating minorities. Whether today’s American Muslims’ responses to anti-Muslim bigotry will have the same positive results is uncertain because American Muslims are much more ethnically and racially diverse than Catholics and Jews. — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 285

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why does institutional confidence correlate with discrimination against minorities? Is this a scapegoating mechanism - displaced anxiety? The mechanism isn’t fully explained here; worth chasing.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s guiding question about fear serving a function for the one who holds it. — connects to: Public confidence in American courts and lawyers is strikingly low — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 98; American confidence in courts is low and deeply split along racial lines — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 80