Less than half of Americans believe racial minorities face substantial discrimination, in a reversal of the previous trend.
Only 40 percent of people in the United States believe that Black and Hispanic people face “quite a bit” or “a great deal” of discrimination, according to a new poll highlighting a reversal in previously held perceptions.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released on Thursday also found that 30 percent of those surveyed felt the same way about Asian people, and only 10 percent believed that white people were discriminated against.
“The number of people saying Asian people and Black people are experiencing a substantial amount of discrimination has dropped since an AP-NORC poll conducted in April 2021,” according to a statement on the NORC website.
The poll comes as US President Donald Trump continues to attack initiatives that promote diversity at universities and the workplace, and to pressure institutions not aligned with his political agenda in the name of combatting left-wing ideas.
In the spring of 2021, amid massive protests against racial injustice following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 60 percent of people polled believed that Black people face “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of discrimination in the US. That figure has now dropped to less than 50 percent.
About 74 percent of Black people say their communities continue to face substantial discrimination, while just 39 percent of white respondents said that Black people face serious discrimination.
People in the US have also become more sceptical about corporate efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, often referred to as DEI. Many large companies have started to roll back such efforts.
Between 33 percent and 41 percent said that DEI made no difference at all, and a quarter said it was likely to increase discrimination against minorities.
“Anytime they’re in a space that they’re not expected to be, like seeing a Black girl in an engineering course … they are seen as only getting there because of those factors,” Claudine Brider, a 48-year-old Black Democrat in Compton, California, told the Associated Press. “It’s all negated by someone saying, ‘You’re only here to meet a quota.’”
But the Trump administration has gone far beyond criticisms of DEI efforts, wielding a wide definition of the term to exert pressure on institutions and organisations that he sees as hostile to his political agenda. The president has threatened, for example, to withhold federal disaster aid from states that do not align with his efforts to roll back anti-discrimination measures and open probes into companies with DEI policies, which he has framed as racist against white people.
A majority of those polled also believe that undocumented immigrants face discrimination, as the Trump administration pursues a programme of mass deportations that have caused fear in immigrant communities across the country.
“Most people, 58 percent, think immigrants without legal status also face discrimination — the highest amount of any identity group,” AP-NORC states. “Four in 10 say immigrants living legally in the United States also face this level of discrimination.”
The poll also found that more than half of the public believes Muslims face substantial discrimination, and about one-third said the same for Jewish people.
