Public Opinion Differences Between Whites and Blacks
29 01 2008Is there less racial discrimination against Blacks in American society these days? Do Blacks have equal opportunity to succeed? How are race relations in the U.S. today? The answers to these questions aren’t so easy and according to a new study by the Pew Research Institute, Blacks and Whites tend to have very different answers to questions like these:
African Americans see a widening gulf between the values of middle class and poor blacks, and nearly four-in-ten say that because of the diversity within their community, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race, a new Pew Research Center survey has found.
The survey also finds blacks less upbeat about the state of black progress now than at any time since 1983. . . . Whites have a different perspective. While they, too, have grown less sanguine about black progress, they are nearly twice as likely as blacks to see black gains in the past five years.
The full report describes how Blacks tend to perceive more discrimination in regards to applying for a job, buying or renting a house, applying to college, and dining out or shopping.
At the same time, the report does note:
The survey finds that black and white Americans express very little overt racial animosity. As they have for decades, about eight-in-ten members of each racial group express a favorable view about members of the other group. Large majorities in both groups say that blacks and whites get along either “very” or “pretty” well, though in both cases a greater number say “pretty well.” More than eight-in-ten adults in each group also say they know a person of a different race whom they consider a friend.
These findings may seem a little contradictory, but I think the results reinforce a notion that many scholars of race and ethnicity like me have been saying all along: racial discrimination is not generally a problem of individual prejudices but of institutional patterns and practices.
In other words, there is no contradiction when Blacks report more discrimination in public life but have generally positive attitudes towards individual Whites because, like I noted, the racism they experience may or may not be manifested through particular White individuals but are almost always reinforced and perpetuated by institutional and organizational forces that frame that particular situation in favor of Whites and at the expense of Blacks.
Therein lies the challenge for all of us as Americans — to change not just individual attitudes and prejudices, but to address deeper, institutional-level influences on how people act and think that may be biased for or against any particular racial group.
I think things for blacks these days as well as in the future are ‘slowly getting better’. They are a far cry better than the way things ‘were’ about 20-30 yrs. ago. But I don’t think institutional and organizational forces have been ‘contributing’ much on their part to ‘prevent’ discrimination and prejudice. I would say it is a ‘very close to no change’ in the institutional-level influences since 20-30 yrs. ago. Institutions and organizations have not done much at all to deplete discrimination; They are ‘not doing enough’ especially in comparison to ‘what they could do’ to lessen discrimination. Also, there are ‘not many’ institutions and organizations taking part in preventing and/or lessening discrimination. Since prejudice and discrimination in an institution still occurs very often then consequently that is why not many blacks think it has become better for them.
I do agree that racial discrimination is an institutional force I think it is important to not forget however the individual levels involved. Most individuals, specifically Whites do not show overt racism yet they are still involved in the institutional racism and prejudices that exists. By denying the differences of equality between whites and blacks white people are contributing to the greater inequalities that exist within society. Those people are accepting the way society is rather than trying to be a force to stop it. There needs to be a level of activism in trying to prevent the widening gap between whites and blacks and whites and other minorities in general.
the following story about Black/White race issues was posted April 6 in the NY Times enewspaper. The story confirms how deeply embedded racism is and offers web sites to test your own racist attitudes.
April 6, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Our Racist, Sexist Selves
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
To my horror, I turn out to be a racist.
The University of Chicago offers an on-line psychological test in which you encounter a series of 100 black or white men, holding either guns or cellphones. You’re supposed to shoot the gunmen and holster your gun for the others.
I shot armed blacks in an average of 0.679 seconds, while I waited slightly longer — .694 seconds — to shoot armed whites. Conversely, I holstered my gun more quickly when encountering unarmed whites than unarmed blacks.
Take the test yourself and you’ll probably find that you show bias as well. Most whites and many blacks are more quick to shoot blacks, no matter how egalitarian they profess to be.
Harvard has a similar battery of psychological tests online (I have links to all of these from my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground, and my Facebook page, facebook.com/kristof). These “implicit attitude tests” very cleverly show that a stunningly large proportion of people who honestly believe themselves to be egalitarian unconsciously associate good with white and bad with black.
The unconscious is playing a political role this year, for the evidence is overwhelming that most Americans have unconscious biases both against blacks and against women in executive roles.
At first glance, it may seem that Barack Obama would face a stronger impediment than Hillary Clinton. Experiments have shown that the brain categorizes people by race in less than 100 milliseconds (one-tenth of a second), about 50 milliseconds before determining sex. And evolutionary psychologists believe we’re hard-wired to be suspicious of people outside our own group, to save our ancestors from blithely greeting enemy tribes of cave men. In contrast, there’s no hard-wired hostility toward women, though men may have a hard-wired desire to control and impregnate them.
Yet racism may also be easier to override than sexism. For example, one experiment found it easy for whites to admire African-American doctors; they just mentally categorized them as “doctors” rather than as “blacks.” Meanwhile, whites categorize black doctors whom they dislike as “blacks.”
In another experiment, researchers put blacks and whites in sports jerseys as if they belonged to two basketball teams. People looking at the photos logged the players in their memories more by team than by race, recalling a player’s jersey color but not necessarily his or her race. But only very rarely did people forget whether a player was male or female.
“We can make categorization by race go away, but we could never make gender categorization go away,” said John Tooby, a scholar at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who ran the experiment. Looking at the challenges that black and female candidates face in overcoming unconscious bias, he added, “Based on the underlying psychology and anthropology, I think it’s more difficult for a woman, though not impossible.”
Alice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, agrees: “In general, gender trumps race. … Race may be easier to overcome.”
The challenge for women competing in politics or business is less misogyny than unconscious sexism: Americans don’t hate women, but they do frequently stereotype them as warm and friendly, creating a mismatch with the stereotype we hold of leaders as tough and strong. So voters (women as well as men, though a bit less so) may feel that a female candidate is not the right person for the job because of biases they’re not even aware of.
“I don’t have to be conscious of this,” said Nilanjana Dasgupta, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “All I think is that this person isn’t a good fit for a tough leadership job.”
Women now hold 55 percent of top jobs at American foundations but are still vastly underrepresented among political and corporate leaders — and one factor may be that those are seen as jobs requiring particular toughness. Our unconscious may feel more of a mismatch when a woman competes to be president or a C.E.O. than when she aims to lead a foundation or a university.
Women face a related challenge: Those viewed as tough and strong are also typically perceived as cold and unfeminine. Many experiments have found that women have trouble being perceived as both nice and competent.
“Clinton runs the risk of being seen as particularly cold, particularly uncaring, because she doesn’t fit the mold,” said Joshua Correll, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. “It probably is something a man doesn’t deal with.”
But biases are not immutable. Research subjects who were asked to think of a strong woman then showed less implicit bias about men and women. And students exposed to a large number of female professors also experienced a reduction in gender stereotypes.
So maybe the impact of this presidential contest won’t be measured just in national policies, but also in progress in the deepest recesses of our own minds.
I agree with the comment about not disregarding the individual level of racism. While it is true that institutional racism has had great impact, and still perpetuates racism today, institutions are made up of individual people. They do not act autonomously. Every decision on policy is made by an individual or group of individuals. The choice to do nothing, and allow institutional racism to continue, is also an individual choice.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Bell
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/nyregion/26bell.html?ref=nyregion
Has anyone heard about this crazy incident that happened a while ago:
The Sean Bell shooting incident was a shooting incident that took place in the New York City borough of Queens on November 25, 2006 in which an unarmed African-American man was shot and killed and two others wounded by plainclothes New York Police Department detectives (two of whom were themselves African-American) in a hail of 50 bullets. The incident sparked fierce criticism of the police from the public and drew comparisons to the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo. Three of the five detectives involved in the shooting went to trial on charges ranging from manslaughter to reckless endangerment, but were found not guilty.
Is there less racial discrimination against Blacks in American society these days?
Absoutly not. If anything it has become a daily norm to hear about an issue about some one being discriminated against. The most common example is two young males applying for the same job. Only difference is that one is white and the other black. Who gets the job? In how many situtions across the United States has a predominitly white community opposed blacks moving into there community for fear of the value of there house dropping? Sadly that is somthing that has been going on for quite some time.
Perfect example was when New Orleans was hit hard there was a picture of white’s and black’s pushing there way throught waist deep water. The whites where said to be “taking what valuables with them they could”… while on the other hand the black were “looting and stealing” Now clearly that was not the case but it is important to ask what made that person believe that? The article raises a really good point
“the racism they experience may or may not be manifested through particular White individuals but are almost always reinforced and perpetuated by institutional and organizational forces that frame that particular situation in favor of Whites and at the expense of Blacks”.
Lets face it, nothing changed for anybody. Over the years racial discrimination has evolved and changed into new ways. But is still alive and living today