American Muslims are more against spanking than Jews: In my ongoing search to learn about American ethnic groups, I looked at the General Social Survey's question about favoring spanking as a form of discipline. Respondents' answers range from 1 (strongly agree) to 4(strongly disagree) so the higher the score, the more people dislike corporal punishment. Here are the rankings:

Mean anti-spanking score
1. Portuguese 2.50
2. Russians 2.39
3. Greeks 2.32
4. Indians 2.30
5. Filipinos 2.27
6. Swiss 2.26
6. Finns 2.26
8. Belgians 2.22
8. Lithuanians 2.22
10. Italians 2.21
11. French Canadians 2.20
12. Danes 2.19
13. Norwegians 2.18
14. Yugoslavs 2.13
14. Rumanians 2.13
16. Poles 2.11
16. Spain 2.11
18. Swedes 2.10
18. Irish 2.10
18. Hungarians 2.10
18. Austrians 2.10
22. French 2.09
22. Chinese 2.09
24. Puerto Ricans 2.07
24. Mexicans 2.07
26. English/Welsh 2.06

National average 2.05

27. Arabs 2.05
28. Czechs 2.04
28. Scots 2.04
30. Germans 2.03
31. Japanese 1.94
31. Dutch 1.94
33. American Indians 1.90
33. Blacks 1.75
35. West Indians 1.62

The tendencies: Americans from Eastern European and Scandanavian backgrounds don't like spanking, blacks and American Indians do. It surprises me that the Japanese like it, but the Italians do not.

I got curious about religion:

Muslim (not black) 2.68
Jewish 2.50
Hindu 2.31
Orthodox 2.30
No religion 2.25
Catholic 2.16
Buddhist 2.16
Protestant 1.91
Black Muslim 1.87

Big surprise--Muslims like spanking less than Jews! And I'm not surprised to see that my tradition--Protestantism--still likes to "whoop the tar out of 'em."