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White Christian nationalists blamed Black Americans rather than social conditions for COVID disparities

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tagsja-picks, xref, seed, causal_relationships, trade, singleton, category/causal-relationships
aliases@gorski_flag_2022, loc. 133

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White Christian nationalists blamed Black Americans rather than social conditions for COVID disparities

Evidence

But white Christian nationalism wasn’t just associated with blaming minorities outside of the country. It was also linked with whites blaming minorities inside the country for their disproportionate infection rates. Early on in the pandemic it became clear that poorer, minority communities were being infected with COVID-19 at higher rates. Public health scholars determined this was largely due to the fact that poorer minorities were more likely to work in situations where they couldn’t safely distance (e.g., food service), have comorbidities, and live in areas with less access to health care. However, we asked Americans how much they agreed with statements placing the blame for higher infection rates on Black Americans behaving irresponsibly or, conversely, on our unjust society (see Figure 1.5). As we might expect, the more that white Americans affirmed Christian nationalism, the more likely they were to blame Blacks themselves and disagree that their higher infection rates were a symptom of circumstance. These patterns make little sense unless we remember that, for whites, political theology also reflects racialized assumptions about civic belonging and worth. — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross, 133

Categorization

  • XREF: Connects to the larger scholarship on Christian nationalism as racialized civic belonging (e.g., Perry & Whitehead, and the ‘racialized assumptions about civic belonging’ echo the racial-classificatory work of these scholars). — connects to: Christian nationalism independently predicts pandemic-era immigrant scapegoating among whites — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian
, 129; White Christian nationalism, not mere distrust, drove evangelical COVID vaccine refusal. — Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian
, 142; Christian nationalism independently drives racial intolerance in white Americans — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 98 (+7 more)
  • SEED: Angle: how a theological commitment (Christian nationalism) predicts a specific, falsifiable attribution style about epidemiology — blame-the-victim readings of health data.

Broader Connections

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