Whites Believe They Are Victims of Racism More Often Than Blacks, Study Suggests

ScienceDaily (May 23, 2011) — Whites believe that they have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in contemporary America, according to a new study from researchers at Tufts University's School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. The findings, say the authors, show that America has not achieved the "post-racial" society that some predicted in the wake of Barack Obama's election.

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Both whites and blacks agree that anti-black racism has decreased over the last 60 years, according to the study. However, whites believe that anti-white racism has increased and is now a bigger problem than anti-black racism.

"It's a pretty surprising finding when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show black Americans with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health and employment," said Tufts Associate Professor of Psychology Samuel Sommers, Ph.D., co-author of "Whites See Racism as a Zero-sum Game that They Are Now Losing," which appears in the May 2011 issue of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Sommers and co-author Michael I. Norton of Harvard asked a nation-wide sample of 208 blacks and 209 whites to indicate the extent to which they felt blacks and whites were the targets of discrimination in each decade from the 1950s to the 2000s. A scale of 1 to 10 was used, with 1 being "not at all" and 10 being "very much."

White and black estimates of bias in the 1950s were similar. Both groups acknowledged little racism against whites at that time but substantial racism against blacks. Respondents also generally agreed that racism against blacks has decreased over time, although whites believed it has declined faster than blacks do.

However, whites believed that racism against whites has increased significantly as racism against blacks has decreased. On average, whites rated anti-white bias as more prevalent in the 2000s than anti-black bias by more than a full point on the 10-point scale. Moreover, some 11 percent of whites gave anti-white bias the maximum rating of 10 compared to only 2 percent of whites who rated anti-black bias a 10. Blacks, however, reported only a modest increase in their perceptions of "reverse racism."

"These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality -- at their expense," note Norton and Sommers. Whites see racial equality as a zero sum game, in which gains for one group mean losses for the other.

The belief that anti-white bias is more prevalent than anti-black bias has clear implications for future public policy debates and behavioral science research, say the authors. They note that claims of so-called reverse racism, while not new, have been at the core of an increasing number of high-profile Supreme Court cases.

Comment:

Some would say that White America seems to be waking up. Perhaps. But don't be too encouraged. The results of these surveys are completely confidential. That being the case, Whites feel freer to speak their minds without the fear of a non-White or White liberal labelling them as racists.

There are a surprising number of people in White America who sympathise with us,but do nothing out of fear of being called the "R" word (racist). This sort of branding of Whites who speak up for themselves in order to frighten them into silence is not new. Over 300 years ago, a different people of a different place used the same technique to silence the voices of reason. Those people were called Puritans, and the place was called Salem, Massachusetts. If you don't get my analogy, the Puritans accused anyone who spoke out against the Witch Trials of witchcraft. They said only a witch would be against the trials, so anyone who opposed them had to be a witch. As a result, most people either went along with things or remained silent. As a result, 20 people were killed and dozens more were tortured, and hundreds were imprisoned in filthy dungeon-like jails.

We must not remain silent. If more speak out, then fewer will be afraid to add their voices to ours. Remember comrades, it's easy to be a patriot when the majority are with you. The greatest patriots are those that are not afraid to stand alone.

Dan 88!