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Blog: Just the social facts, ma'am

Abstract

 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       2023Less 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]