After 7 years of Obama’s presidency, the most intense discrimination in America is no longer based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or immigration status. Americans now most discriminate against others based on political partisanship and affiliation.
That’s the striking discovery of a study by Stanford political scientist Shanto Iyengar and Princeton postdoctoral researcher Sean Westwood, titled “Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization,” which was published this year in the American Journal of Political Science.
In four experiments, the two researchers found that:
- Discrimination based on political affiliation “exceeds discrimination based on race.”
- “While Americans are inclined to ‘hedge’ expressions of overt animosity toward racial minorities, immigrants, gays, or other marginalized groups, they enthusiastically voice hostility for the opposing party and its supporters.”
- Marriages across party lines are down to below 10% from more than 30% in the 1960s.
In an interview with Bloomberg about the study, Professor Iyengar concludes that the fabric of American society is fraying: “I don’t want to sound like I’m an alarmist, but I could see the possibility of violence, large-scale street movements which are politically motivated.”
~Eowyn
