![Sample our Social Sciences journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110822/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Social-Sciences.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
Using a nationally representative sample of adults in the US, this study examines the majority and minority’s positive views of the country in terms of nativity status, race and ethnicity, and religion. The results suggest that the majority–minority differences vary by demographic characteristics and attitudes examined. Although non-US citizens have a lower level of regard for the US as the best country in which to be a citizen than their counterparts, they have no less favourable views in other respects. Among ethnic minorities, only blacks have more negative views of the US than whites do. While religious minorities also have less regard for the country than the majority, individuals with no religious affiliation hold lower levels of most national attitudes. These findings suggest that the associations between minority status and views of the country go beyond race and ethnicity, which previous research has overlooked.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for invaluable comments from Jane D. McLeod and Brian Powell on earlier drafts of this article. I would also like to thank the editors and two anonymous referees of Ethnic and Racial Studies for their useful suggestions. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Atlanta, GA. Please direct all correspondence to Ryotaro Uemura.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 “Minority” means the proportional minority as well as the group that has a relatively low status in society. In countries such as South Africa, this correspondence does not occur. However, previous studies generally assume the congruence of the proportional minority and subordinate (or lower) statuses.
2 A few studies examined the association between immigrant status (defined as either individuals’ citizenship status or their parents’ citizenship status) and the conceptualization of national identity in terms of its multidimensionality (e.g. Kunovich Citation2009). These studies usually find that minority members favour a definition of national identity based on achieved statuses, while the majority prefers one based on ascribed statuses.
3 The ISSP data were made available by the Zentralarchiv für Empirische Sozialforschung, Koeln. See their website for more information: http://www.issp.org/.
4 For race/ethnicity, I used a variable provided by the ISSP 2003, which has exclusive categories including “Latin-American, South America, Spanish-Origin Western countries”. “Latino” in the Appendix represents the respondents who chose this category over others such as whites and Asian. The ISSP in the US was conducted as a part of General Social Survey (GSS) 2004 in which a variable for Hispanic origin beyond racial background is available (the GSS data were made available at http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website). Among those who completed the ISSP module, 8.3 per cent of respondents indicated Hispanic origin. In supplemental analysis, I used an alternative set of variables: non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, Hispanics, non-Hispanic Asians, and non-Hispanic other race. The results are generally similar to those reported in the present paper.
5 Research finds a heightened level of national sentiments of Americans in general after September 11 (e.g. Rasinski et al. Citation2002).
6 In the current data, those who identified as Muslim account for 0.36 per cent of the analysis sample; in the US population, they represented 0.4 per cent in 2007 and 0.7 per cent in 2014 (Pew Research Center Citation2015). As Marvasti (Citation2005) observes in the stigma-management strategies among Middle Eastern Americans, some respondents in the current data may have adopted passing (Goffman Citation1963) for religious identification, which may have resulted in the underestimation of religious minority effects.