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Racial Discrimination, Religion, and the African American Drinking Paradox

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Abstract

African Americans are more likely to abstain from drinking than are Whites; yet, they are more likely than Whites to engage in problem drinking. The analysis uses data from the 1999–2000 National Survey of Black Workers (N = 1692), which is a nationally representative sample of currently employed and recently unemployed English-speaking African American adults. This article examines the link between discrimination, religion, and African American drinking behavior. The results from multinomial logit analyses show that those who experience more discrimination are significantly more likely to be social drinkers (vs. nondrinkers). At the same time, when controlling for other factors, those who experience more discrimination are significantly more likely to be problem drinkers. When religiosity is taken into consideration, it acts as a suppressor in the relationship between experience with discrimination and nondrinking, as those who experience more discrimination are significantly less likely to be nondrinkers (vs. social drinkers). The results also suggest that religiosity partially explains the relationship between discrimination and problem drinking. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Throughout the paper, the terms “African American” and “black” are used to refer to people of the African Diaspora and to such populations that reside within the United States. Furthermore, the term “Black” is capitalized to distinguish the racial category and related identity from the color. Similarly, the word “White” is capitalized when referring to race.

  2. A suppression effect is a relatively rare statistical effect that occurs when there appears to be no relationship between two variables, but when a third variable is introduced, the relationship between the first two factors becomes apparent and statistically significant.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Marina Adler, Cedric Herring, Michael Hughes, Steven Tuch, and the anonymous reviewers at Race and Social Problems for their comments and suggestions on various drafts.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD, USA

    Loren Henderson

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Henderson, L. Racial Discrimination, Religion, and the African American Drinking Paradox. Race Soc Probl 9, 79–90 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-016-9188-3

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