Is there less racial discrimination against Blacks in American society these days? Do Blacks have equal opportunity to succeed? How are race relations in the U.S. today? The answers to these questions aren’t so easy and according to a new study by the Pew Research Institute, Blacks and Whites tend to have very different answers to questions like these:
African Americans see a widening gulf between the values of middle class and poor blacks, and nearly four-in-ten say that because of the diversity within their community, blacks can no longer be thought of as a single race, a new Pew Research Center survey has found.
The survey also finds blacks less upbeat about the state of black progress now than at any time since 1983. . . . Whites have a different perspective. While they, too, have grown less sanguine about black progress, they are nearly twice as likely as blacks to see black gains in the past five years.
The full report describes how Blacks tend to perceive more discrimination in regards to applying for a job, buying or renting a house, applying to college, and dining out or shopping.
At the same time, the report does note:
The survey finds that black and white Americans express very little overt racial animosity. As they have for decades, about eight-in-ten members of each racial group express a favorable view about members of the other group. Large majorities in both groups say that blacks and whites get along either “very” or “pretty” well, though in both cases a greater number say “pretty well.” More than eight-in-ten adults in each group also say they know a person of a different race whom they consider a friend.
These findings may seem a little contradictory, but I think the results reinforce a notion that many scholars of race and ethnicity like me have been saying all along: racial discrimination is not generally a problem of individual prejudices but of institutional patterns and practices.
In other words, there is no contradiction when Blacks report more discrimination in public life but have generally positive attitudes towards individual Whites because, like I noted, the racism they experience may or may not be manifested through particular White individuals but are almost always reinforced and perpetuated by institutional and organizational forces that frame that particular situation in favor of Whites and at the expense of Blacks.
Therein lies the challenge for all of us as Americans — to change not just individual attitudes and prejudices, but to address deeper, institutional-level influences on how people act and think that may be biased for or against any particular racial group.