Whites and Blacks have a different view of race in America? Say it ain't so!

This article definitely falls into the ‘this should come as no big surprise’ category. Saw this over at ‘The Nation’ and, of course, my first thought was ‘and in other news ice has been determined to be cold’. No one should be the least bit surprised that whites think that more racial progress has been made than blacks, on average. As the author, Jamelle Bouie rightly notes, given that a white person could go through their entire life and have no real substantial contact with blacks depending upon their location, it would be rather astonishing if whites and blacks did not, on average, hold wildly different views.
One of my favorite demographic tidbits is the fact that there are roughly six white Americans for every person labeled as “black” in the census. Which means, given the extent to which African-Americans are concentrated in a few geographic regions, that there are large numbers of white people who have minimal to nonexistent contact with black people.
With that in mind, it’s not too surprising to discover the extent to which white Americans have a far more optimistic view of race relations than their black (and even Latino) fellow citizens. According to the latest survey by the Greenlining Institute—“a national…institute working for racial and economic justice”—just 16 percent of whites believe that there is a lot of discrimination in America today, compared to 59 percent of African-Americans and 22 percent of Latinos.
Overall, the institute found, whites have an incredibly skewed view of racial progress in this country. Despite the fact that African-Americans and Latinos earn significantly less money and have less wealth than their white counterparts, only 37 percent of whites believe that blacks make less money than whites, and a small majority believe that blacks’ and whites’ incomes are about the same. Likewise, a majority of white Americans believe that blacks’ health is “about the same” as their own, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The one problem I have with Mr. Bouie’s post, and it is a very small quibble, is this:
In addition to the relative lack of contact between whites and blacks, it’s simply true that elite blacks have achieved an unprecedented level of influence in American life (see: President Obama). Absent contact with everyday black communities, it’s easy to think that African-Americans are doing as well as everyone else.
As a middle-class black person, I do have some problem with the construction of blacks in America either being ‘everyday’ (read poor) or elite (read rich). Are not blacks who have middle class careers and lifestyles also ‘everyday blacks’? Aren’t all of those black college professors, ministers, lawyers, doctors and various cubicle drones also ‘everyday’ and are we not part of ‘everyday black communities’? I understand why black identity has been equated, for the last four decades at least, with poor, urban blacks but I remain unconvinced that this should be the touchstone of black identity. All of that said, Bouie does go on to say that our perception of race in America is not necessarily correct but perhaps more accurate.
It would be interesting to know why so few Latinos (only 22%, less than 10% more than whites) think that there is a lot of active discrimination in modern America. It makes me ponder whether somewhere between the overly optimistic view of whites and the potentially overly pessimistic view of blacks there is an accurate picture of race relations held by Latinos. That view would be ‘yes, there is still racial discrimination but, on the whole, it is not your grandparent’s discrimination