‘Diversity, Not Hate’: White People, Black People, and White Privilege
On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, the American Conservative launched a new poll that asked if whites have “more in common” with people of other races than they do with people who are not white.
The poll found that a whopping 70 percent of whites believe they are “more like” people of another race than they are like themselves, while the pollsters were careful to note that whites’ perceived “otherness” is not entirely justified: “The data show that there is no one-size-fits-all answer for how people perceive their own group.
In fact, it seems that a lot of whites are just not comfortable with their perceived racial, ethnic, or cultural superiority, and they may feel uncomfortable being labeled ‘other’ as a result.”
In a more recent survey, the National Center for Education Statistics found that whites have a higher level of racial and ethnic identity than other groups in the United States.
This is despite the fact that whites are more likely than other races to have some degree of racial or ethnic identity and to experience discrimination in employment, housing, and educational opportunities.
The National Center found that only 13 percent of white Americans have the full range of social and cultural identities considered by the U.S. Census Bureau.
This makes sense when you consider that white Americans are more ethnically diverse than blacks and Hispanics, as well as Asians and Pacific Islanders.
“While the data suggest that whites feel less “other” than other Americans, the same cannot be said of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans.
In a Pew survey conducted in April 2018, 54 percent of African American respondents said that they feel more “other”—but only 19 percent of Hispanic respondents said the same.
And only 8 percent of Asian respondents said they felt more “own” than white Americans.
And in a Pew poll taken in March 2018, only 13% of Native American respondents reported feeling more “self-identifying” than whites.”
These surveys do not tell the full story about how whites perceive their race and ethnicity, because the data does not capture the extent to which people of different races experience racism in the U.” read the full article.
