Are African Americans As Racist as Other Ethnic Groups

July 18, 2013
Written by Glenn Minnis in
Race Relations
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A recent Rasmussen Reports poll concludes African-Americans are at least twice as likely to be more racist than any other ethnic group. Photo Credit: uptownmagazine.com

A recent Rasmussen Reports Poll that concludes African-Americans are at least twice as likely to be more racist than any other ethnicity, including whites, has many critics responding with a consider the source type shrug.

The poll concluded that 37 percent of all American adults think that blacks hold the most warped attitudes toward other groups as it relates to race, while whites registered at just 15 percent and Latino Americans at 18.

Additionally, data shows that those who describe themselves as conservatives consider 49 percent of blacks to be more racist, compared with just 12 percent of whites they described as such. Among liberals, 27 percent of respondents see whites as being most racist, compared to just 21 percent of blacks.

In terms of partisans polling, 49 percent of Republicans see most black Americans being as racist, compared with 36 of independents and 29 percent of Democrats.  Rasmussen also found that even 31 percent of blacks consider themselves to be the racist group, some seven points higher than the light in which they cast whites and more than the double the 15 percent of them that deem Hispanics to be the most jaded.

Martin Luther King, Jr. with caption "Don't be racist against blacks. Don't be racist against whites. It's not complicated people."

In the case of white adults, nearly four times as many of them (38 percent) consider blacks to be more racist than all whites (10 percent). Roughly half of those tabbed describing themselves as Republicans, 49 percent, believe “most black Americans are racist,” compared to 47 percent of all Democrats. Among those describing themselves as “very conservative,” that figure swells to some 58 percent.

Overall, the right-leaning survey culled the views of

1,000 adult telephone respondents 1,000 telephone respondents over a 48-hour period beginning July 1 and touts its bottom-line findings as 70 percent of all interviewees find whites to not at all be racist and 59 percent of all “Americans believe race relations are “good to excellent” or  at least “getting better.”

Ironically, Rasmussen’s findings come at a time when much of the nation seems racially polarized by the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman not guilty verdict as well as the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Critics of the poll in general and Rasmussen in particular are also quick to point out this is, too, an era during which a Fordham University study rated the North Carolina-based firm as one of the least accurate pollsters of the entire 2012 election cycle. 

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Throughout much of the 2012 presidential election season, Rasmussen held to its largely unfounded prediction that Milt Romney would oust President Obama from the White House and even as 24-hours before the election had Romney still comfortably ahead.

According to Quinnipiac University, 105 polls released in Senate and gubernatorial by the firm and its subsidiary, Pulse Opinion Research, chartering Senate and gubernatorial races in 2010, the firm wrongfully predicted Republican winners by an average of nearly six percentage points.

Some 13 of its polls alone were off by an average margin of more than 10 points, considerably higher than that of most of other firms. In one instance, the firm’s Hawaii Senate seat prediction missed the mark by more than 40 points, the largest known error ever recorded in a general election poll of any kind.

Rasmussen’s findings come at a time when much of the nation seems racially polarized by the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman not guilty verdict as well as the Supreme Court’s recent decision to strike down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

If all of this says nothing else, we need to have a serious conversation in the country about race and racism.

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Race Relations