Half empty or half full?

 The Washington Post recently had a story called “Black Americans More Upbeat but Fear Worsening Racism, poll finds.”  As the title shows, the results could be read in different ways.  Near the end, it said that most black employees had pretty favorable views of their own workplaces, but “beyond work, however, 17 percent of Black Americans say they often feel treated with less respect or feel as if they received bad service at a restaurant or store because of their race.” That was followed by a graph entitled “Fewer Black Americans say they are often treated poorly … than in 2006.”  The numbers of black people who say that various things happen to them “often” or “somewhat often” because of their race.

                                                     2006       2023

Less respect than others                 25%      17%

Poorer service.                               27%       17%

Act as if you’re not smart.             32%.      21%

Act afraid of you.                           26%.      16%

Act as if you’re dishonest.              22%.      15%

“Often” experience one or more.   54%.       36%

They could have added another “however”:  17% is too many, but it’s less than the 25% who said that they experienced that in 2006.   There’s been a substantial decline on all of them since 2006.  The 2006 survey was done by telephone, and the 2023 survey was done over the internet.  In 2006, black respondents were more likely to report discrimination if they had a black interviewer, suggesting that there was some “social desirability bias” when they had a white interviewer:  black respondents were reluctant to offend or sound like they were complaining.    That’s not a factor with a web survey, so the decline may have been even larger than the above comparison suggests.   

Returning to the paradox in the title of the Post story, people are usually more negative about both the levels and trends of things that are more remote from their lives:  schools in general compared to the schools in their neighborhood, or economic conditions generally versus their own financial situation.   So although I think some of fear of worsening racism reflects actual political developments, I think that the bigger story is the substantial decline in perceived discrimination in their own lives.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

A change was gonna come

Americans have become less committed to organized religion in the past few decades.  But does that mean that we are becoming more secular or that religion is becoming more individualized--ie, religious feelings are less connected to organized religion?  In 1962, the Gallup Poll asked "Would you say that you have ever had a religious or mystical experience--that is, a moment of sudden religious insight or awakening?"  20% said yes, 73% no, and 7% were listed as "no code or no data."  If the last group was "don't know" I'd count it as "no," but since that's not clear I'll treat it as missing.  Gallup asked the question again in 1976, and other organizations asked in 1994, 2006, and 2009.  The results:

1962     22%    78%

1976     31%    69%

1994     34%    66%

2006     48%    52%

2009     51%    50%

The 2009 question came near the end of a Pew survey that focused on religion, which may have increased the number of positive answers.  The 2006 survey also contained a number of questions on religion, although I don't have the whole questionnaire.  But even if you discount those, it seems like there has been an upward trend.  I looked at group differences in 1962 to see if they gave any hints that a change was coming--e. g., were younger or more educated people more likely to say yes?  The only factors that made a clear difference were one's own religion and region--Protestants and Southerners were more likely to say yes.  Breaking it down by both religion and region, it appeared that it was specifically Protestants in the South--37% said yes.  Outside the South, there was little difference between Protestants and Catholics (18% vs. 15%).  Jews were lower, and "other" and "none" were a little higher than Catholics, although the numbers are too small to be very confident.  There also seemed to be an interaction with education--in the South, less educated people were more likely to say yes, but outside the South, the relationship was weaker or maybe reversed.  But overall, a sociologist who looked at the data in 1962 would probably have predicted a decline, on the grounds that the South was likely to converge with the rest of the country.  I'll look at the more recent patterns in a future post.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research] 

Punditry

The New York Times has had roundtable discussions of presidential candidates as they enter the race, and had one on Tim Scott a couple of weeks ago.  It wasn't until the eighth comment that someone noted that  "Republican primary voters have been eager to consider Black candidates in recent cycles: Herman Cain in 2012, Ben Carson in 2016."  Neither one had any of the conventional qualifications to be president, neither one was especially well known, and Carson put very little effort into his campaign, so their performance suggests that many Republicans want to support a black candidate.  The participant who made this point was Daniel McCarthy, the most conservative of the group.  I don't think that's a coincidence:  most progressives see the story of the last decade or so as one of backlash, white supremacy, white nationalism, etc..  For example a news article about Republican "candidates of color"   said "In the early years of the Obama presidency, talk of a post-racial society .... was common. But later, an upsurge of white supremacist violence .... shattered that idealized post-racial notion ...." and then quoted Andra Gillespie, a professor of political science at Emory:  "You could have argued in 2006 and 2007 that racism was waning. That’s a lot less credible today.” 

 But if you look at surveys on issues involving race, opinions have continued to move in the same direction that they've been moving for many years--towards support for the principle of equality. Although it's less certain, it also seems that agreement that there is at least some discrimination against blacks has increased.    As far as blacks in elite positions, at one time many whites were opposed--for example, in 1958 the Gallup poll asked "if your party nominated a generally well-qualified man for president, would you vote for him if he happened to be a Negro?" and 53% said they would not.  As time went on, white people came to accept black representation in elite positions, and now many or most regard it as desirable.  I couldn't find any series of questions on this point, but Tim Scott was selected to give the official response to the State of the Union address in 2021, and he wasn't even the first black Republican to do that (JC Watts was, in 1997).  So as a black candidate who has served in the Senate and has good political skills, Scott is likely to be a strong contender.  

A couple of other observations:
1.  I looked up occurrences of "post-racial" in the New York Times in 2008-10.    There were over 100, so I didn't read them all, but the great majority involved people saying that it was a myth or an illusion.  I couldn't find any that said America really was a post-racial society, or on the verge of becoming one.  
2.  McCarthy said that "nearly one in five Black men nationwide voted for Donald Trump in 2020" and Michelle Goldberg said that "the Democratic Party is losing Black men."  These claims seem to be based on the 2020 exit polls, which showed 18% of black men voting for Trump.  Exit polls are useful because they come out soon after the election and include large samples from every state, but they are not regarded as particularly accurate.   The American National Election Studies take a long time to appear, but are regarded as high quality.  According to the ANES, 8.7% of black men and 5.9% of black women voted for Trump.  That's in line with the normal levels of black support for Republican candidates in recent decades.