Seeing is achieving: religion, embodiment, and explanations of racial inequality in STEM

Abstract

ABSTRACT Ample research demonstrates how religious commitments influence beliefs about racial inequality within US society without considering how individuals’ explanations of inequality might differ with relationship to different racialized structures and institutions. Here we focus on science, an institutional sector perceived to be in tension with religious institutions and marked by persistent disparities in racial representation. Drawing on focus groups with fourteen pastors from twelve different churches, as well as interviews with twenty congregants, we find that Black and Latinx Christians in our sample draw on both individualistic and structural explanations of STEM inequality. Individualistic attributions, however, were primarily seen as products of structural constraints. Discursively, respondents saw STEM inequality resulting from not “seeing” aspects of science that would promote engagement. These results complicate prior work on religious understandings of racial inequality while also providing guidance for interventions designed to promote racial equality in STEM fields in particular.