THE title of this post is a damning indictment of the state of race relations in the U.S. Too many people, especially too many white people have dismissed for too long the charges from communities of color that police are brutally racist in their attitudes and treatment of anyone other than whites. We are getting the message though. I was at my sisters when the video of this shooting was on the nightly news, followed by the video of the California cop beating the woman along a highway and the pregnant woman being thrown to the ground by a cop. It was not lost on my sister, her husband, and our parents that the cops were all white and the victims were minorities. Maybe this will be the catalyst we need to have an honest and open discussion of the problem of racism and police brutality. From +Mother Jones .....
Republicans Still Having a Hard Time Believing In Racism
| Thu Sep. 25, 2014 12:15 PM EDT
The chart below, from a recent PRRI survey, has gotten a fair amount of attention on the intertubes over the past couple of days:
Adam Serwer thinks the change between 2013 and 2014 is due to backlash from the Ferguson shooting, but I suspect that's only part of the story. The poll was done over the course of four weeks, and only the final week overlapped with the shooting of Michael Brown and its aftermath. Those folks in the final week would have had to change their opinions massively to produce the 5-10 point difference we see in the survey population as a whole.
So there's probably more to it, and that's a good thing. It suggests the shift in opinion might be more durable than one motivated by a single incident.
But I want to play partisan hack today and just focus on the far left bar, which shows that Republicans are far less likely than Democrats to think that blacks don't get a fair shake from the criminal justice system. At first glance, you might figure that's just demographics at work. Republicans are heavily white and old, and those two groups are the ones least likely to think blacks are treated unfairly.
But take another look. The mere fact of being Republican makes you less likely than even whites and seniors to believe blacks don't get fair treatment. Why? Call it the Fox News effect. If you're exposed day after day to Fox and Drudge and Limbaugh, it means you're being overwhelmed with the message that blacks are dangerous, blacks are thuggish, and blacks are forever whining about wanting special treatment. This message is so overwhelming that even after Ferguson, Republicans are far less likely than any other group to acknowledge the simple fact that blacks might occasionally get treated a little roughly by cops and DAs.
That's changed by ten points in the past year, so maybe there's hope. Perhaps Fox and the others have toned down their obsession with racial hot buttons over the past year. Perhaps.
Adam Serwer thinks the change between 2013 and 2014 is due to backlash from the Ferguson shooting, but I suspect that's only part of the story. The poll was done over the course of four weeks, and only the final week overlapped with the shooting of Michael Brown and its aftermath. Those folks in the final week would have had to change their opinions massively to produce the 5-10 point difference we see in the survey population as a whole.
So there's probably more to it, and that's a good thing. It suggests the shift in opinion might be more durable than one motivated by a single incident.
But I want to play partisan hack today and just focus on the far left bar, which shows that Republicans are far less likely than Democrats to think that blacks don't get a fair shake from the criminal justice system. At first glance, you might figure that's just demographics at work. Republicans are heavily white and old, and those two groups are the ones least likely to think blacks are treated unfairly.
But take another look. The mere fact of being Republican makes you less likely than even whites and seniors to believe blacks don't get fair treatment. Why? Call it the Fox News effect. If you're exposed day after day to Fox and Drudge and Limbaugh, it means you're being overwhelmed with the message that blacks are dangerous, blacks are thuggish, and blacks are forever whining about wanting special treatment. This message is so overwhelming that even after Ferguson, Republicans are far less likely than any other group to acknowledge the simple fact that blacks might occasionally get treated a little roughly by cops and DAs.
That's changed by ten points in the past year, so maybe there's hope. Perhaps Fox and the others have toned down their obsession with racial hot buttons over the past year. Perhaps.
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