Summary of Christian Smith & Michael O. Emerson's Divided by Faith

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 Race is an American dilemma. It is what Swedish researcher Gunnar Myrdal called an American dilemma. It is indivisible from American life. #2 The impact of race in America is not just seen in incidents such as the one just described, but also in the broader picture of a racialized society. #3 To understand the racialization perspective, we must understand that race is socially constructed.
While Americans are socialized from a young age into the reality of race, race as a social construct arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to justify the overtaking and enslaving of whole people groups. #4 A major problem in understanding race relations in the United States is that we tend to understand race, racism, and the form of racialization as constants rather than as variables.
This view has serious implications.