"For the particularly sensitive issue of whether to classify African-American Protestants as evangelicals, there is further complication. The same mid-1990s survey found that more than one-eighth of all Americans who could be identified as evangelicals by the Bebbington characteristics were African Americans. In the United States, white evangelical churchgoers and black Protestant churchgoers affirm just about the same basic convictions concerning religious doctrines and moral practices. But for well-established historical reasons concerning the discriminatory treatment of African Americans, black Protestant political behavior and social attitudes are very different from those of white evangelicals. If, in terms of both historical descent and religious convictions, most black Protestants could also be considered evangelicals, the history of racial attitudes has driven a sharp social wedge between them and white evangelicals. Yet if common sense prevails, the difficulties are manageable. As the historian George Marsden has pointed out, evangelicalism can be described as a series of overlapping constituencies that vary in their self-consciousness, but that are related at least loosely in their shared history and convictions. Relatively small numbers of individuals and agencies, often active in parachurch voluntary societies or nondenominational mission agencies, often active in parachurch voluntary societies or nondenominational mission agencies, self-consciously use the evangelical label. Much larger numbers are associated with churches and other institutions embedded securely in the historical train of evangelical movements. And still larger numbers from the world, who may have only loose connections with Western evangelical organizations, nonetheless share the historic evangelical beliefs and practices and so may be included in wider considerations of evangelicalism as well."