Religious Microaggression in Public Schools

Background and Purpose:Religion is one dimension of cultural identity that defines difference from dominant culture, and often reduced status for people of minority religious status in the United States. Intolerance and hatred toward people who are affiliated with minority religions is prevalent in the U.S. but very little research has been done to understand how discrimination and marginalization manifests in the lives of religious minority youth. The purpose of this study was to better understand the lived experiences of minority religious youth who attend public schools in the U.S. in an area where the majority of students are affiliated with one dominant religious tradition.

Methods: Focus groups were conducted with 50 adolescents (ranging from grades 6-12) who affiliated with religious minority groups (11 Jewish, 11 Muslim, 18 Catholic, and 10 Universalist Unitarian). All participants in each focus group were from the same religious group and the focus groups took place at locations where students regularly gathered with their peers. The focus groups were semi-structured and posed a series of questions about times at school when they experienced or witnessed incidents related to their minority religious beliefs or faith. Analysis was conducted using grounded theory methodology and applied a method of constant comparative analysis.  Axial coding was used to group the codes into categories which 1) identified the incidents that participants described to illustrate the phenomenon under examination; 2) allowed for an examination of the data for the causal and contextual explanations for the incidents; and 3) observed intervening influences that shaped differential qualities among the experiences of the participants.

Findings: Our analyses of the data yielded four major themes: Minority Status, Precursors, Teacher/Adult Roles, and Perception of Peer Intent.This study revealed important insights into the mechanisms and dynamics of religious discrimination in schools. The nature of this discrimination occurs in many different forms. Several of the incidents described by the participants were congruent with the definition of hate crime or bullying since the perpetrator clearly intended to harm the victim with overtly hateful or demeaning words or actions. Moreover, the experiences were representative of the concept of microaggression because they tended to be small isolated events, sometimes hard to interpret, and often without intent to harm.

Conclusion and Implications: School social workers are integral to the school culture and have an important role to play in bringing about greater awareness of the experiences that students with minority religious beliefs may encounter in public schools. This may be particularly crucial in regions of the country where the majority their peers and teachers are affiliated with one religious tradition. Findings from this study point to the need for the implementation of strategies designed to increase religious tolerance in our increasingly diverse U.S. public schools.