Black/White Gap Growing On Ferguson Police Actions

I am old enough to remember when segregation of the races was the norm in the South (including my home state of Texas). There were separate restrooms, water fountains, and schools for Blacks and Whites -- and Blacks were not allowed to sit with Whites on transportation vehicles or in restaurants. It was a terrible time, and I never understood why Blacks and Whites weren't treated equally (because, thank goodness, I was not raised by racist parents).

Then we had the turbulent sixties, when Blacks (and some Whites) rose up and demanded change. There were demonstrations throughout the South, and many of those demonstrations turned violent. But Americans in general understood that it was not the demonstrators but the police (spurred on by the White power structure) that was instigating the violence (through arrests of people exercising their constitutional right to assemble, through beatings, and by turning fire hoses and attack dogs on peaceful demonstrators).

That police violence played a big part in turning many Americans (including most Whites) against segregation, and everyone but the racists understood the need for the civil rights laws -- and were happy to see them passed. Unfortunately, too many Whites in America thought that had solved the nation's racial problems. It didn't solve those problems (although it did help some), but it allowed White Americans to once again put the nation's racial problems on the back burner.

But for Black Americans, many racial problems persisted -- especially in how they are treated by the police and in the justice system. And the statistics are there for anyone who wants to see. Blacks are stopped, harassed, beaten, and even killed by the police far more than Whites. And Blacks are sent to prison in far greater numbers than Whites -- even when convicted of the same crimes. But while Blacks must live with these racial problems, Whites don't (and that makes it easy to deny that the problems exist).

Then we had the shooting of an unarmed Black youth in Ferguson by the police -- shot six times while trying to surrender with his arms in the air. That was just one time too many, and the Black community reacted by holding demonstrations. And they were met with a militarized police force (with military uniforms, assault rifles, tear gas, and military vehicles) that treated them as an enemy, rather than American citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble and ask the government for a redress of their grievances. And the police provoked violence -- reminding me of the bad old days when Southern police turned on peaceful demonstrators with violence.

Sadly, the reaction to this police violence was different than it had been back in the sixties. The public (especially Whites) wants now to blame the demonstrators, instead of the police provoking the violence. Note in the charts above that 34% of Whites thought the police violence was reasonable, while only 32% said it was unreasonable -- far different from the 16% of Blacks saying it was reasonable to 48% saying it was unreasonable.

That was bad enough, but in the few days since that first survey the gap between the views on Whites and Blacks has grown wider. Now 45% of Whites see the Ferguson police actions as reasonable to only 14% of Blacks -- and 63% of Blacks see those actions as unreasonable to only 27% of Whites (a whopping 36 point gap).

This leads me to the conclusion that today many Whites don't see (or don't want to see) the racial problems that persist in this country -- and that means those problems will just continue. Problems don't heal themselves in this world -- they just grow worse by being ignored.

NOTE -- The charts above were made from information in surveys taken by the YouGov Poll. The surveys were taken August 14-17 and August 20-21 of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of about 4 points.