Racism Is Still A Problem In U.S. - Whether Whites Want To Admit It Or Not

The charts above were constructed with information from the newest Gallup Poll on racial attitudes in the United States. The poll was done between June 13th and July 5th of a nationwide sample of 4.373 adults (including 1,010 Blacks) -- with a margin of error of 2 points (5 points for Blacks only).

Note that things do seem to be slowly getting better. While 44% of Blacks thought they were being discriminated against on jobs, housing, and income in 1993, twenty years later that has dropped 7 points -- to 37%. That's still too high, but I find it interesting that each generation of Blacks sees less discrimination than the preceding one. I don't know if that's because the young haven't experienced as much discrimination as their elders did (at least not yet), or whether they just tend to see this poor economy as being hard on all races.

Meanwhile, Whites continue to bury their heads in the sand. Only 15% think discrimination still exists in jobs, housing, and income. It seems to me that too many Whites don't see racism because they don't want to see it -- and that takes some effort, since the racist voices in our society have been louder and more upfront since the election of President Obama.

And then we come to the idea of racism in our criminal justice system.

While a pitiful number of Whites recognize the existence of discrimination against Black males in the criminal justice system (only 19%), Blacks don't see as much progress being made there. Significantly larger percentages of Blacks, even among the young, think discrimination and racism is still a big problem in our criminal justice system. And after having worked in that system for over 25 years, I have to agree with them. It is fundamentally unfair to both minorities and the poor -- and justice is just a dream for those both poor and a minority.

This poll was done before the verdict was announced in Florida in the Zimmerman case. It would be interesting to see if that would change the percentages (of either race).