Is multiculturalism as American as apple pie? A survey of attitudes toward ethnic and religious diversity in the United States

Abstract

What percentage of American citizens believe that the real America is a White Christian America? How many would prefer to live in a more homogeneous or singular country, one occupied primarily by members of their own ethnic, racial, or religious group? In the face of contemporary changes in the composition of the population, to what extent have the White Christian citizens of the United States become fearful of demographic replacement? Alternatively posed: To what extent is ethnic, racial, and religious diversity valued by American citizens? Is it or is it not a basic feature of their ideal of what America means? Those are the questions addressed in this study. A representative sample of American citizens (n = 986) was asked to estimate the actual and the desired distribution of ethnicities, races, and religions in the United States on the national level. We find that two-thirds of our respondents want a more ethnically/racially diverse United States than the current demographics and over half of respondents want a population that is more religiously diverse than the status quo in 2020. Only a tiny percent idealizes a country that is ethnically or religiously homogeneous. The survey results suggest that the ideal of a multicultural country composed of diverse ethnic, racial, and religious groups is widely accepted. The results also suggest that the supposed fear of a national “Great Replacement” of White Christian Americans by non-White or non-Christian minority groups may have been greatly exaggerated.