Why are white evangelicals blind to structural discrimination?
Revering free will & individual responsibility, they are blind to discrimination.
They believe that racial inequalities stem from black people’s lack of effort, poor values & self-interested fabrication
Superb book
“Everyone is responsible for their own actions” is core to Evangelical thought
Back in 1996, only 21% of white evangelicals recognised ‘discrimination’
I previously struggled to understand how people might be so blind to discrimination.
I didn’t understand how they were so impervious to the evidence.
Others might call it ‘racism’, but that seems so vague.
I wanted to understand the exact cognitive process.
Now I realise that this is similar to what Jo Henrich has argued more generally (but not on racism, afaik).
People’s mental models and cognitive processes shape how they interpret new information
And these vary enormously all over the world.
Alice Evans