This is quite distinct from investigations of bias and discrimination and prejudice and how those may or may not be manifested. That is a completely different topic. All humans carry assumptions about the external world which are constantly in need of updating. When I meet a complete stranger, I impute certain, often unconscious, assumptions about the individual based solely on sensory perceptions such as gender, height, ethnicity, physical fitness, attire, hair, age, etc. Typically those assumptions are the product of observation and/or statistical knowledge (explicit or implicit). From those observations I derive a set of statistical assumptions that are usefully true at a group level and are the basis for risk and opportunity assessment - how likely is this person to represent a threat to me versus how likely is it that this is a person with whom I can productively collaborate?
The accuracy of those initial impressions are independent of and almost certainly materially inconsistent with the individual's actual demonstrated history. The individual is not the group average. Initially, we simply don't know the history and behaviors of that individual. The imposed group average assessment is a poor substitute for real knowledge of the individual but it is usefully beneficial when there is otherwise no knowledge about the individual.
As long as people update their working assumptions as additional information becomes available, there usually isn't a problem. The challenge is when people hold assumptions (empirical or not) which are negative or prejudicial against the stranger and refuse to update those assumptions as actual evidence emerges as to the validity of the assumptions.
An overweight, unkempt, sloppily dressed individual with dirty hair may strike me as unreliable on first sighting. If I interact with that person for a time and discover that they are in fact highly reliable, I need to update my assumptions and ensure that I do not carry a discriminatory prejudice based solely on those shallow proxies (overweight, unkempt, sloppily dressed individual with dirty hair) and that I take into account and accord the benefits to the relevant fact that they do demonstrate reliability.
This post is not about racism per se. This is about the evidentiary basis for some of the core claims behind the Critical Theory and Social Justice movement as they are articulated via the current Black Lives Matter riots.
To that end, and entirely fortuitously, from Americans Say Blacks More Racist Than Whites, Hispanics, Asians by Rasmussen Reports.
The survey of 1,000 American Adults was conducted July 21-22, 2020 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.1,000 is still too small for the granular statistical analysis Rasmussen is doing but much better than most surveys. Example - Asian Americans are roughly 6% of the US population and therefore presumably 6% of the sample size, i.e. 60 respondents. 60 is too small a sample size to reliably estimate the average opinion of 20 million people (all Asian Americans in the US).
The Mandarin Class, with a cult-like belief in Critical Theory and Social Justice (CTSJ) is insisting that Americans accept four assertions of truth made by BLM: 1) that racism is prevalent and ubiquitous in the US, that 2) all whites are inherently racist, that 3) blacks are both innocent of racism and incapable of racism, and that 4) racism is much worse in America than elsewhere in the world.
This data from Rasmussen is insufficient to completely refute those assertions but it does call them into question. While the Mandarin Class (academics, journalists, K-12 education, main-line clergy, select advocacy groups and state agencies) might believe these hypotheses to be obviously true, Rasmussen makes clear that these are views held by very few Americans. The Mandarin Class are likely less than 10 million people (3.7 million K-12 teachers, 1.5 million faculty at universities, less than 50,000 journalists, 430,000 clergy, 22 million federal, state and local employees, etc.
In total 27 million people are in professional environments where CTSJ is prevalent. As identified in The Atlantic, only 1% of Americans participate in more than 8 out of ten advocacy actions. Only 11% are involved in even 4-7 such activities. In contrast;
Forty-one percent of Americans do not participate very often in any of 10 bedrock activities of American civic and political life, according to the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor survey.Taking the results at face value only 12% of the 27 million should even remotely be considered to be advocates. One might conclude that 12% of 27 million might be considered as Critical Theory Social Justice beliefs, i.e. 3.2 million Americans. Triple that for conservative margins and you get the assumed 10 million. As for the other 320 million Americans, their views are markedly different from those purveying Critical Theory Social Justice beliefs.
From the Rasmussen polling results. Indents are findings from the article.
CTSJ Hypothesis 1 - Racism is prevalent and ubiquitous in the US
22% of all Americans think most Americans are racist.Only one out of five Americans believes most Americans are racist. 80% of Americans reject the central precept of the Critical Theory/Social Justice hypothesis.
There is other information not from this study which supports that the 80% of Americans who assess that most Americans are not racist are correct.
In 1967, only 3% of new marriages were interracial. In 2015 following a multi-decadal rise, 17% of new marriages were interracial. The fact that the US has many immigrant groups from different races (Jamaicans, Haitians, Nigerians, Cubans, Venezuelans, Chinese, Indians, etc.) whose socio-econometric measured successes exceed those of native born whites, suggests that race is far less determinative of outcomes than are personal choices, behavior, and culture.
Interestingly, most ethnic groups share this view that there are relatively few racists (13-18%). Surprisingly perhaps, most Americans identify racism as most prevalent among African-Americans (25%).
Eighteen percent (18%) say most white Americans are racist. But 25% believe most black Americans are racist. Fifteen percent (15%) think most Hispanic-Americans are racist, while nearly as many (13%) say the same of most Asian-Americans.
Hypothesis 1, that racism is prevalent and ubiquitous in the US is rejected by nearly 80% of Americans and there are empirical grounds for believing that they are correct in rejecting the hypothesis.
CTSJ Hypothesis 2 - All whites are inherently racist.
As already indicated, of all the respondents, only
Eighteen percent (18%) say most white Americans are racist.It is worth repeating - Only 18% of all Americans believe most white Americans are racist. If only 18% say that even most Americans are racist, one would expect that very few would assess all whites as inherently racist. The Critical Theory Social Justice hypothesis is not only a small minority view, it is likely a tine minority who view all whites as racist. A marked contrast to the headlines.
Even among those who accept the Critical Theory and Social Justice precept that racism can only run from whites to blacks and minorities cannot be racist, only a minority believe that most whites are racist.
Among adults who think racism refers only to discrimination by whites, 36% consider most white Americans racist.Empirical evidence from hate crimes statistics supports this majority view that racism is very rare and can occur across any ethnic group and is not manifested only in whites.
The same statistics also indicate an extremely low prevalence of racially motivated hate crimes. Only 27% of all hate crimes are constituted of racially motivated crimes against African Americans.
Finally, only 41% of all hate crimes are committed by whites.
In terms of public views of interracial marriage, 91% believe it to be a good thing or irrelevant. Only 3% of Hispanics see interracial dating as a bad thing and only 9% of whites see it as a bad thing. Strikingly, those most objecting to interracial dating are African Americans with some 18% seeing it as a bad thing. But that is still only 18%.
In the World Values Survey, only 3% of Americans identified having an objection to people of a different race as neighbors. This is not broken out by race of respondent but this statistically has to be close to the maximum possible degree of stated racism.
Hypothesis 2, All whites are inherently racist is rejected by at least 82% of Americans and there are strong empirical grounds for believing that they are correct in rejecting the hypothesis. Since 82% of all respondents do not even believe that most white Americans are racist, the percentage believing that all white Americans are racist must be markedly lower.
CTSJ Hypothesis 3 - Blacks are both incapable of racism and innocent of racism.
From Rasmussen:
75% of American Adults think the term “racism” refers to any discrimination by people of one race against another. Just 15% say it refers only to discrimination by white people against minorities.In other words, 75% of Americans believe that any race can discriminate against any other race; that African Americans can demonstrate racism just as can whites, Asian Americans and Hispanics. Only 15% support the CTSJ view that racism can only occur by whites against others.
Further, Americans believe racism is more prevalent among African Americans.
Eighteen percent (18%) say most white Americans are racist. But 25% believe most black Americans are racist. Fifteen percent (15%) think most Hispanic-Americans are racist, while nearly as many (13%) say the same of most Asian-Americans.Americans believe racism is 66% more prevalent among African Americans (25%) than the average of all other races (15%).
The 18% of African Americans mentioned above who object to interracial dating is concordant with these results.
The FBI Hate Crime Statistics also support the rejection of the hypothesis. African Americans commit a disproportionate percentage of hate crimes (19%).
Hypothesis 3, Blacks are both incapable of racism and innocent of racism is rejected by at least 85% of Americans and there are strong empirical grounds for believing that they are correct in rejecting the hypothesis.
CTSJ Hypothesis 4 - Racism is much worse in America than elsewhere in the world.
The Rasmussen results do not answer this directly. We know that only
22% of all Americans think most Americans are racist.But we do not know the degree to which other countries view themselves as racist. All we know is that a small but material minority in the US believe most other Americans to be racist.
More critically, what we really want are empirical measures of manifested racism, rather than opinions about racism. This is challenging as the definition of racism and prejudice is highly variant among countries and relatively few countries either collect the granular data necessary or conduct the relevant analyses. For some countries, class, cultural or religious discrimination is by far the greater manifestation of discrimination than is race.
Even the research that does exist is subject to data, methodology and definitional debates.
One recent effort published in 2019 and conducted by leading institutions across the US and Europe is Do Some Countries Discriminate More than Others? From their Abstract:
Comparing levels of discrimination across countries can provide a window into large-scale social and political factors often described as the root of discrimination. Because of difficulties in measurement, however, little is established about variation in hiring discrimination across countries. We address this gap through a formal meta-analysis of 97 field experiments of discrimination incorporating more than 200,000 job applications in nine countries in Europe and North America. We find significant discrimination against nonwhite natives in all countries in our analysis; discrimination against white immigrants is present but low. However, discrimination rates vary strongly by country: In high-discrimination countries, white natives receive nearly twice the callbacks of nonwhites; in low-discrimination countries, white natives receive about 25 percent more. France has the highest discrimination rates, followed by Sweden. We find smaller differences among Great Britain, Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, the United States, and Germany. These findings challenge several conventional macro-level theories of discrimination.They find that the US is among the least racist countries. Using the US as the base of 1.0, they find discrimination in Germany to be less (0.92), and Norway the same (1.00). The Netherlands (1.03) and Belgium (1.04) come in a little higher. Next in elevated discrimination are Great Britain (1.11) and Canada (also 1.11). The most discriminatory nations are France (1.43) and Sweden (1.30).
From the World Values Survey, in comparison to 76 other countries, only 3% of Americans would object to having a neighbor of a different race versus an average of 17% for all the other countries.
Among OECD countries to which America is usually compared unfavorably, objection rates to a neighbor of a different race are:
USA - 3.0%Despite being the third largest nation in the world and by far the most racially, ethnically, and religiously diverse, the objective data we have seems to indicate that the US is among the least prejudicial and discriminatory nations.
Average of all others - 8.4%
Australia - 3.9%
Austria - 7.9%
China - 18.0%
Denmark - 3.1%
Finalnd - 6.8%
France - 3.7%
Greece - 24.4%
Italy - 11.7%
Japan - 14.3%
New Zealand - 2.6%
Norway - 2.6%
South Korea - 15.2%
Spain - 12.5%
Sweden - 1.0%
Switzerland - 4.2%
United Kingdom - 2.1%
Hypothesis 4, Racism is much worse in America than elsewhere in the world is rejected as it seems unsupported by the paucity of empirical evidence available from FBI Hate Crimes, from the World Values Survey, and from the most relevant research conducted.
In summary, there are four important precepts held by Critical Theory Social Justice advocates such as BLM - 1) that racism is prevalent and ubiquitous in the US, that 2) all whites are inherently racist, that 3) blacks are both innocent of racism and incapable of racism, and that 4) racism is much worse in America than elsewhere in the world.
All four hypotheses are rejected by the great majority of Americans, at rates of roughly 80% to the 15% of those supporting the BLM hypotheses in some fashion. The objective grounds for the 80% of Americans rejecting the Critical Theory Social Justice beliefs seem well grounded in real world empirical evidence. BLM beliefs are not accepted by the great majority of Americans and are not supported by any empirical evidence.
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