Monday, October 29, 2012

51% Racist

In a poll conducted by the Associated Press it was discovered that 51% of all American's hold explicitly ant-black views. This figure is up from 48% four years ago, proving that the idea of a post racial America after the election of President Obama is little more than a myth. The number of those who expressed implied racism has also gone up from 49%-56% over the same four year period.
The political divide in and of itself is not surprising but the results are. 79% of all Republican's polled, willingly expressed racial prejudice when answering question which measure explicit racism, as opposed to 32% among democrats. In other words, racial prejudice exists in both parties but is more readily expressed by Republican's. The Democratic Party on the other hand is one in which such behavior is frowned upon and not readily expressed because of the stigma attached.
The implied racism test showed that the majority of Republican's, 64% and Democrat's 55% have an implied racial prejudice against blacks.
According to this survey, political independence are the least racist, with 49% exhibiting implied racial prejudice against African-American's.
This poll was taken solely online because the respondents were more likely to express their true feelings on a computer as opposed to an interviewer.
The explicit racism component of the test exposed those polled to a wide array of questions in reference to African- Americans, asking them to agree or disagree, and then measured their responses. The survey also asked the respondent's to associate Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics with certain adjectives including friendly, hard working, violent, and lazy.
In the second section of the test measuring the implicit component, those tested were shown the neutral image of an Asian character on screen while pictures of Blacks, Whites, and Latino's were flashed immediately before the character appeared. This enabled the tester to gage the feelings of the respondents because research suggests that people project their feelings about the photograph on to the character.
This study repeatedly uses terms like "anti-black sentiment", "explicit feelings of prejudice", and "implicit feelings of prejudice" in an attempt to soften the blow because racism is not politically correct in this country even if it in fact is prevalent and does exist. Overt (explicit), expressions of racism, or subconscious (implicit) feelings of racism is still racism. Who are they softening the blow for. It is a widely held notion within the Black community, that certain segments of our society are inherently racist. The political party affiliation doesn't matter.
Republicans who are 97% white believe that African American's are the cause of each and every one of society's ill's. They believe that we are social leeches in search of a hand out. As evidenced by Mitt Romney's 47% comment. His statement was far more than the inane rambling of an elitist opportunist. But he most likely espoused the views of many in his party, rich and poor.
The vast majority of Caucasian Democrat's and Liberal's see the African-American community as little more than a progressive cause which they can use for a dual purpose. To assuage their "guilt", and rebel against their peers and family. There are some who actually have good intentions but, their inability to identify with African- American's is a hinderance to any well intentioned efforts. Racism and prejudice are not just learned behavior. We are all affected by cultural conditioning in some way, shape, or form. Those who are not conscious of the behavior and perpetuate it are, in a sense, doing what comes naturally. This does not make it right by any means. The one thing that segment's of both of these parties have in common is that fact that they hoped the election of President Obama would keep us quiet, stop us from playing the race card, and keep them from having to walk on proverbial egg shells around us in the process. This is the reason for the spike in racism in the past four years. They feel more comfortable in being who they are in what they think is this new "post racial America" because Barack Obama being elected some how leveled the playing field. As if the remnants of hundreds of years of slavery, prejudice and discrimination could all be wiped away in 4 years. Nothing could be further from the truth. It has, as evidence by this poll, made attitudes about race regress. The election of President Obama has unequivocally proven that racial prejudice is still alive and well in America.

PR

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