A few years ago, I compiled information from a number of surveys and concluded that perceived discrimination against blacks increased sharply around 2015. I recently ran across a question that I hadn't noticed then, which I'll use to check and update those conclusions. The question is "In general, do you think blacks have as good a chance as white people in your community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified, or don't you think they have as good a chance?" It was first asked in 1963, then again in 1978, then in 1989 and pretty frequently since then.* The figure shows the percent who said they did have as good a chance minus the percent who said they didn't.
It increased between 1963 and 1978, then stayed about the same for several decades. Agreement was higher in two surveys from January and October 2009, which probably reflected general optimism associated with Barack Obama's election as president. In February 2015, 72% thought black people had an equal chance and 28% that they didn't. The next time the question was asked was in July 2016: 64% said they did and 36% that they didn't. In July 2020, it was 58% and 42%. In July 2021, it was 55% and 44%. People often say that there was a period of "peak woke" for a year or two after the murder of George Floyd, but that it's receded as maybe even been replaced by a backlash. However, when the question was asked in June 2025, the results were almost the same as in 2020 and 2021 (55%-42%).
In my earlier post, I suggested that the change in opinion was the result of media coverage and viral videos about police misconduct and the mistreatment of black people in everyday life. But why did they find such a large and receptive audience? In a book published in 1981, Samuel Huntington proposed that American politics was marked by periods of "creedal passion"--when substantial groups of people became upset about the gap between widely held values (the "American creed") and actual social conditions. Of course, the "American creed" is hard to define, but I would say that a belief in social mobility for both individual and groups is a major part of it. Americans accept a lot of inequality, but don't like anything that resembles a caste system, with hereditary groups at the top and bottom. After the civil rights laws of the 1960s, the general view was that in a generation or two, the class distributions of blacks would be similar to that of whites. But although there was some decline in racial inequality, it was slow--that is, there was increasing tension between the ideal of a mobile society and the reality of enduring inequality. And if racial inequality is the result of discrimination, then it's clear what can and should be done to reduce it. As a result, people were attracted to that explanation: the alternative was that we might just have to live with it for a long time, maybe forever.
That leads to the question of why the change in views on race hasn't led to substantial reforms--if anything, public policy has shifted away from trying to reduce racial inequality. I'd say it was a lack of political leadership. In its absence, the desire to do something led to actions that were unhelpful or sometimes counterproductive (e. g., dropping standardized tests in university admissions).
*It referred to "negroes" the first time it was asked. I also include a few that asked: "Do you think that blacks who live in your community do or do not...have as good a chance as whites to get a job for which they're qualified?"
No comments:
Post a Comment