A substantial and growing number of Americans say that Barack Obama is a Muslim, while the proportion saying he is a Christian has declined. More than a year and a half into his presidency, a plurality of the public says they do not know what religion Obama follows. A new national survey by the Pew […]
As a group, African Americans attracted relatively little attention in the U.S. mainstream news media during the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency — and what coverage there was tended to focus more on specific episodes than on examining how broader issues and trends affected the lives of blacks generally.
The fallout from the firing of Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod and the one-year anniversary of the controversial arrest of African American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., have put race back in the news. How much coverage do African Americans receive? What role did race play in coverage of the Obama Administration? A new study examining media coverage of African Americans in the first year of the Obama presidency offers answers.
Despite a general consensus that women should have the same rights as men, people in many nations around the world say gender inequalities persist. Many say that men get more opportunities than equally qualified women for jobs that pay well and that life is generally better for men than it is for women in their countries.
Government leaders in India have agreed that the nation’s 2011 census could include a tally of castes, the complex structure of traditional social classes that last were officially measured in 1931. Those caste numbers are the basis of quotas for government employment and university enrollment, and help determine spending on social welfare programs. A council […]
Should doctors, pharmacists and other health care workers have the right to refuse to provide services that conflict with their religious beliefs? Until recently, the debate over “conscience protections” for health care workers centered largely on abortion and birth control. But in the past few years, new cases have emerged that have expanded the debate […]
Nearly a quarter of Americans say Hispanics face a lot of discrimination in society today, making them the racial/ethnic group the public sees as most often subjected to discrimination.
More Americans believe that Hispanics are the targets of a lot of discrimination in American society than say the same about any other major racial or ethnic group, according to a survey taken prior to the enactment of an immigration enforcement law by the state of Arizona.
On April 19, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez, a case that will determine whether a public institution can refuse to officially recognize a religiously based organization that prevents those who do not share its religious and moral values from becoming voting members. The case arose […]
The following briefing by Brian J. Grim, a senior researcher at the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, was presented to the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight on the Pew Forum’s findings on restrictions on religion around the world. Good morning. I would like to begin by […]