In a Pew survey released this week, more than two-thirds of Mormons believe that they are viewed by fellow Americans as outside the mainstream, while almost half feel there is “a lot” of discrimination against them. So much so, in fact, that only 31% think that blacks in the US experience equal discrimination.
Republican presidential frontrunner and former governor, Mitt Romney, was not polled, nor presumably was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one of the most powerful figures in Washington. Both men are Mormons. Also not available was Romney’s father George (d. 1996), a devout Mormon who managed to become both Chairman and CEO of American Motors Corporation and Governor of Michigan all before Martin Luther King, Jr. led the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. According to BYU, adult male employment rates among Mormons are “quite high and relatively uniform throughout most countries of the world.” No Mormon surveyed mentioned difficulty in hailing a cab.