The Pew Research Group released a study about the American people’s perceptions of the 2016 election. There is a major disconnect between black and white perceptions of how black people are treated.
They asked groups of white people and black people questions about how the different races are treated. For example, when asked if black people are treated unfairly by the police, only 50-percent of white people and 84-percent of black people say that black people are treated unfairly by the police.
From the study:
“An overwhelming majority of blacks (88%) say the country needs to continue making changes for blacks to have equal rights with whites, but 43% are skeptical that such changes will ever occur. An additional 42% of blacks believe that the country will eventually make the changes needed for blacks to have equal rights with whites, and just 8% say the country has already made the necessary changes.”
Republicans were asked about President Obama’s role in race relations. The answer might surprise you:
“Among whites, 28% say Obama has made progress toward improving race relations and 24% say he has tried but failed to make progress. But a substantial share of whites (32%) say Obama has made race relations worse. This is driven largely by the views of white Republicans, 63% of whom say Obama has made race relations worse (compared with just 5% of white Democrats).”
How are the Republicans getting to this conclusion? How could the black president be making race relations worse? This doesn’t compute, but they do think this. Of course, these are the same people that are voting for Trump, so they may not be the sharpest tools in the shed.
The President has done a great job making progress for us, but I guess white Republicans won’t acknowledge that. He has achieved so much despite the backlash from the right:
- Unemployment down from over 10% to under 5%
- Deficit slashed by more than two-thirds
- Bush-era tax cuts for the mega rich stopped
- The Affordable Care Act passed — ensuring twenty million MORE Americans are covered
- Marriage Equality is now the law of the land
Here is Ben Carson talking about race relations:
