From the findings of a recent University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll:
The vast majority of Democrats, 74%, said that either Black people (43%) or transgender people (31%) face the most discrimination in America today, while among Republicans, 65% said that either white people (34%) or Christians (31%) face the most discrimination.
Furthermore, only 11% of Republicans think Blacks are the most discriminated group. 12% think transgender people are.
I think we all know how it is that so many more Republicans think white people and Christians face more discrimination than Blacks and transgender folk: the perpetual grievance and resentment stoked by the likes of Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro and then parroted by MAGA politicians:
The Dallas Observer pretty much proved my point when it noted that it’s not just Texas Republicans who think white Christians are the biggest victims:
Lone Star State conservatives aren’t the only ones who think this way. In a 2020 national survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, nearly three-quarters (73%) of Republicans who trusted FOX most out of all TV news reported that they believed Christians face “a lot of discrimination.” Around 58% said white people are often discriminated against.
The Observer cited a February appearance on Fox & Friends by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) as a good example of how the right-wing whips up imaginary victimhood, then uses it as a weapon against tolerance:
A member of Finland’s parliament, Päivi Räsänen, was on trial for her beliefs, Roy said. He lambasted the controversy as a “war on religious freedom.” (Räsänen was accused of provoking anti-LGBT+ hate speech after she derided homosexuality as a “disorder of psychosexual development” and called gay people “dysfunctional,” according to Euronews.)
“This is a really chilling reality in a Western civilization country,” Roy said. “This isn’t Iran; this isn’t China. This is Finland, and the American people need to know this is coming to a theater near you.”
In that segment, Fox host Steve Doocy validated and drove home the victimhood meme by exclaiming that Räsänen and a cohort were “on trial for being religious!”
So it’s not just the intolerance that progressives are up against in this country, but the daily, right-wing-media drumbeat of fear and persecution that fuels it.
