Published: 05 November 2012
Country: US
The survey conducted by the Associated Press (AP) shows that racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.
Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people’s more favorable views of blacks.
But there were some different media readings and interpretations of these AP poll results.
Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008. “In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election”, reports AP.
“As much as we’d hope the impact of race would decline over time … it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago,” said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.
Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.
The AP surveys were conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and NORC at the University of Chicago.
Analysing AP poll results iMediaEthics David W. Moore asked what these results on racial attitudes really tell us?
In his blog on iMediaEthics Moore stated some of the findings of the recent Associated Press poll of racial attitudes in America:
- 43% of blacks are anti-black
- 30% of whites are anti-white
- Almost 9 in 10 (88%) Americans harbor racial prejudice
Because these figures are not the same as in the the Associated Press news story paragraph shown above, iMediaEthics colummnist Moore asked Josh Pasek of the University of Michigan, lead author of the academic report on the poll results, for the additional information.
Both Moore’s description of the poll results, and the AP description, are accurate. Only the graph below presents more extensive results of the second measure referred to in the AP paragraph, the one that measures “implicit” racial attitudes.
Note that among respondents overall, 56%* did indeed express anti-black sentiments. Among non-Hispanic whites, the number is 59%. Among non-Hispanic blacks, the comparable number is 43%, reports iMediaEthics.
The AP news story focused on the “overall” numbers. Nowhere did it mention that the same scale of anti-black sentiments attributed to the public as a whole also showed close to half of all blacks harboring prejudice against their own race. The story also fails to mention the surprising amount of anti-white prejudice that exists – 30% among whites themselves, with almost a half of blacks (47%) also expressing anti-white attitudes.
Had the story highlighted these results, certainly one of the first questions to be raised would be: Can “racism” be defined in such a way that so many blacks would themselves be considered “racist” against blacks, asks David W.Moore on iMediaEthics blog?