A new Washington Post / ABC election poll, according to Post writer Scott Clement, suggests that,

 Substantial prejudice still exists for both Mormons and African Americans, despite shifting views on both groups since Barack Obama and Mitt Romney first ran for president four years ago.

Sizable pockets of voters say they would be uncomfortable with a close family member marrying someone who is black or Mormon, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, with Mormons facing slightly more distrust from people outside their community.

Twenty percent of voters report discomfort with the idea of a Mormon marrying into their immediate family; 14 percent say the same for African Americans. For blacks, proximity appears key: Whites living in communities with few or no African Americans are more apt to express uneasiness than those in more diverse communities. That geographic distinction seems to matter less for Mormons.

But as Joanna Brooks writes for Religion Dispatches (reposted at Salon):

The comparison made me uncomfortable, and for reasons beyond the fact that a Mormon and an African American are facing off for president. It’s just an awfully simplistic way to gauge discrimination.

She goes on to helpfully point the way to perspective, via Jana Riess at Religion News Service:

• “White Mormons can easily blend into white society and ‘hide’ their minority status in ways that persons of color cannot.”
• “White Mormons face no systemic cultural poverty. They are on par socioeconomically with the rest of America, and in fact fare slightly better in terms of education and affluence.”
• “African-American women, according to statistics released yesterday from the Center for American Progress, have an unemployment rate of 13.3%, nearly double that of white women, and make up 53% of those with no health insurance.”
• “White Mormons have no history of enslavement.”

In other words, it’s comparing apples and oranges, and other than they’re both fruit — in this case the “fruit” is prejudice — there is no similarity at all, and it’s pretty insulting to apples to pretend that oranges suffer anything like anything similar to the degree of discrimination, bias, and outright bigotry that African-Americans… I mean apples… have endured for 400 years. Let’s keep in mind that’s almost 300 years more history of prejudice than Mormons have history, period.

Aside from being annoyed with WaPo/ABC (nothing new there), however, I thought the wrongness of the comparison might hold a useful lesson for movement atheism in light of recent calls to confront racism in our own numbers. Prejudice, like it’s sneakier cousin Privilege, isn’t a zero-sum game. One can be prejudiced against both Mormons and Blacks and when one meets a Black Mormon (unlikely as it may seem, they exist) both forms of prejudice can and do pile up on top of each other. This pile will inevitably be found in the intersection of the privileges that the bigot enjoys in our society. The bigot is given the privileges, but owns the prejudices — and in this way is all set up to make an attribution error.

This realization alone should give movement atheists pause as we consider why more African-Americans don’t leave their pews and join us in thinking freely — they may already find themselves in that awful intersection point of society’s privileges, and don’t feel like making themselves more of a social pariah than they already are. Surely we can empathize with that legitimate concern? Why would someone choose — as atheism is a choice — to make themselves even more unlikable in the eyes of many of their fellow citizens?

Even if this isn’t an explanation for why atheists tend to be white, it provides a statistical basis for suggesting there are legitimate sociopolitical reasons for some members of minorities to shun movement atheism, even in the event they are themselves a closet atheist. It walks a mile in a minority True Believer’s shoes and sees that there may be hidden variables. Maybe they just don’t want to invite one more prejudice to a list already growing long.