WASHINGTON – Even in polls taken before the police killings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, and the racially motivated sniper attack that left five Dallas police officers dead, there’s clearly a racial divide on what people think about the state of race in the nation.
“The numbers are striking,” says John Johnson, president of Edgeworth Economics and author of the book “EVERYDATA.” He said respondents in one survey were asked whether they thought African Americans were treated less fairly relative to whites by police. About fifty percent of whites said yes. “But black Americans, 84 percent thought African Americans were treated less fairly by the police and these numbers were before the instances of this past week.”
He said surveys about the proportion of Americans who think race relations in the nation are good have changed greatly in the 8 years since President Obama took office. At the time of his first election, Johnson said between 60 and 65 percent of Americans, regardless of race, thought race relations were pretty good.
“[Now] 61 percent of African Americans think race relations are bad, and 45 percent of whites think race relations are bad,” Johnson said.
He cautions that recent events are often front and center in people’s minds when taking a survey, and that they can definitely swing opinions. After events such as the mass shooting in the nation last month, where 49 people were killed in Orlando, Florida, Johnson said there are often transient spikes in opinions about gun control. Also, he said that surveys about emotional issues are shaped by the question itself.
“How is it that pollsters actually ask the question,” Johnson explains. “Are there inflammatory or emotional words in the question? That’s the thing you have to watch out for.”
Johnson thinks polls are often shaped by a respondent’s personal experiences, and that even the notion of a question about what race relations means can mean something different to different people.
But there are statistics that are clear, such as numbers Johnson said show that there’s been an increase in both shootings by police and in officer fatalities in the first half of 2016. There are other numbers that show a significant racial difference with respect to male victims of gun violence in the nation.
“Young African Americans die from gun violence about 90 of every 100,000” said Johnson, quoting numbers from a Brookings Institute memo backed on CDC statistics, “whereas young white men die 30 out of every 100,000 … It’s a pretty stark difference.”
There are other statistics out there that breakdown of the number of police shootings so far this year. A Washington Post database finds that more than 500 people have been shot and killed by police so far. More than 120 of them were African American.
