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EQUIP (Ensuring Quality and Unleashing Improved Performance) – # 3
A recent Gallup Poll found there are large differences between the views of white and black Americans on key measures of race relations in the United States. While these perceptions may not be representative of race relations at specific educational institutions, awareness of these differences could assist decision makers as they plan strategies to improve the educational climate of their schools.
- Black Americans’ perceptions of the current state of race relations in the U.S. have deteriorated since 1998. Currently, 37% of black adults characterize race relations as "somewhat" or "very" bad, compared to 27% in 1998. White evaluations have been stable over this same period, with 29% currently giving a negative evaluation.
- Nearly 7 in 10 whites (69%) say that blacks are treated "the same as whites" in their own community, this view is held by only 41% of blacks.
- 35% of white adults believe that blacks are treated less fairly by the police in their community, compared to 66% of black adults.
- Nearly 9 of 10 whites feel that they are treated fairly by state and local police, compared to just over half of blacks. This gap in perceptions of treatment by the police is significantly larger than the one recorded in 1999, when blacks were much less likely to claim unfair treatment.
- The practice of "racial profiling" is believed to be widespread by 83% of blacks, but only by 55% of whites. This is a significant increase since1999.
- More than 8 of 10 whites said that black children have as good a chance as white children to get a good education in their local community, but only half of blacks view the educational opportunities for black and white children as equal. Although the gap between black and white opinion has narrowed to half this size on several occasions over the past several decades, it has broadened again, as black Americans’ perceptions of educational equality for black children has declined. Americans’ opinions on this issue—and the significant racial gap between them—stand almost exactly where they stood nearly 40 years ago.
- Satisfaction with one’s safety from physical harm or violence stands at 77% for blacks and 94% for whites.
- When asked which group would do the best job at improving race relations — local business, local government, state government, federal government, religious organizations or local schools — blacks give significantly lower ratings than whites to all groups. In general, Americans are divided between those that feel religious organizations and local schools would do the best job. Blacks are more likely to choose religious organizations (26%) than local schools (17%), while whites pick local schools (30%) over religious organizations (22%).
The gap between black and white opinions
on questions about equal treatment is a long-term fixture of American
racial opinion and has shown only a modest narrowing in the past
35 years.
Looking to the future, a majority of blacks express pessimism about the likelihood that a solution to the problems of black/white relations in the U.S. will ever be worked out. Black Americans are as pessimistic as they have ever been with 66% claiming that race relations will always be a problem in this country. At the same time, white Americans express less pessimism about the future of black/white relations than they have since Gallup first asked the question in 1993. Currently, 45% of whites say that race relations will always be a problem.
The divergence between white and black Americans’ expectations for the future of race relations stands at an all-time high of 21 percentage points, and is especially acute among those over the age of 50. Among this older segment, the belief among blacks that race relations will always be a problem has risen to 69%, while among whites of this age it has fallen to 40%. In contrast, over the 3 previous surveys, the levels of pessimism among blacks and whites in this age bracket had been within 4 percentage points of each other.
Gallup Poll Social Audit on Black/White Relations in the United
States
conducted from March 23-May 15, 2001