Shocker: Poll Finds Fewer Americans Believe Black People Face Discrimination
In news shocking absolutely no one, a poll recently conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that fewer Americans believe Black people face significant discrimination as compared to 2021.
According to AP, the poll found only 45% of Americans believe Black people faced “quite a bit” of discrimination. This is down 15% from 2021, where 60% of people believed Black people faced significant discrimination in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the racial uprising that followed.
This can be filed under “disappointing, but not surprising.”
It’s only been five years since George Floyd’s death, yet we’ve already gone from calls for racial equality to white folks publicly declaring they’re fascists and turning “Black fatigue” into a racist trend. The 2024 election only drove home that for white folks, the “racial reckoning” was simply a fad they never put much weight behind.
The poll also revealed growing skepticism across all demographics and political backgrounds over whether diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are actually helping the people they’re designed for, with 4 in 10 Black people believing that DEI initiatives actually increase discrimination against Black people.
If I can put on my speculation hat, I think this has less to do with DEI initiatives and more to do with how quickly the conversation around them turned toxic. Almost as soon as the concept of DEI became widespread, there was outrage and backlash from the usual suspects. “DEI hire” quickly became the mediocre white person’s slur of choice whenever they saw an employed Black person.
“Anytime they’re in a space that they’re not expected to be, like seeing a Black girl in an engineering course … they are seen as only getting there because of those factors,” Claudine Brider, a 48-year-old Black Democrat in Compton, California, told AP. “It’s all negated by someone saying, ‘You’re only here to meet a quota.’”
I can personally attest to that reality. I hosted and produced a gaming show in 2022, which inevitably attracted some of the lamest lames the internet can produce. I cannot tell you how many times I’d see “DEI hire” in the comments on the videos I hosted, and it’d only been less than two years since DEI entered the public lexicon. In the years since, we’ve seen DEI falsely blamed for causing plane crashes, wildfires, and bridge collapses.
So sadly, it comes as no surprise that we’ve reached a point where 3 in 10 Americans now believe DEI programs are actually discriminatory against white people, with white people making up 39% of the folks who agree with that assessment. I’m going to assume a disproportionate number of those people currently work for the White House, given that the Trump administration has continually labeled DEI initiatives as discriminatory. The president himself promised “restitution” for “victims of DEI discrimination,” shortly after being elected for the second time.
Despite the apparent skepticism over the helpfulness of DEI initiatives, another poll earlier this year found that companies that keep their DEI programs have better reputations. Polling also revealed that corporate lawyers and high-level executives believe DEI initiatives are necessary to avoid legal risk.
It’s long felt like America has gradually been going backward when it came to race relations, and now we have objective data proving it. While it’s an objectively crappy reality, at least we can be clear-eyed on where people truly stand.
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