Most White Americans believe they face discrimination

A new poll is out that confirms two things simultaneously: that most White people think they’re the real victims of discrimination, and that most White people have no idea what actual discrimination looks like.

A majority of whites say discrimination against them exists in America today, according to a poll released Tuesday from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

"If you apply for a job, they seem to give the blacks the first crack at it," said 68-year-old Tim Hershman of Akron, Ohio, "and, basically, you know, if you want any help from the government, if you're white, you don't get it. If you're black, you get it."

More than half of whites — 55 percent — surveyed say that, generally speaking, they believe there is discrimination against white people in America today. Hershman's view is similar to what was heard on the campaign trail at Trump rally after Trump rally. Donald Trump catered to white grievance during the 2016 presidential campaign and has done so as president as well.

This next bit is particularly revealing:

Notable, however, is that while a majority of whites in the poll say discrimination against them exists, a much smaller percentage say that they have actually experienced it. Also important to note is that 84 percent of whites believe discrimination exists against racial and ethnic minorities in America today.

So most Whites are convinced they face discrimination that they also say they’ve never experienced. It’s almost as if claims that their group suffers from discrimination are rooted in word-of-mouth and third-hand anecdotes and other unreliable sources of information, rather than actual studies or first-hand knowledge.

The study also shows a correlation between perception of discrimination and socioeconomic status: the less money you make, the more likely you are to believe you (or your ethnic group) are discriminated against. The report doesn’t say it, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that education level also has something to do with it. As always, it boils down to a common thread: People with lower-paying jobs and/or less education tend to live in more rural areas, which are generally more insular, and thus have less exposure to others from different walks of life. It’s why you see more acceptance of the reality of bigotry and discrimination in big cities – more people living together and seeing, and thus understanding, what others go through. It’s much easier to dismiss it all as the whining of snowflakes when you don’t see those people and their hardships in your everyday life.

That’s why the popular Right-wing refrain about big-city liberals being “out of touch” is so ridiculous. It’s literally the other way around. Being surrounded by people with differing experiences from your own forces you to open your mind and see things from their perspective, broadening your view of the world. Whereas staying put in smaller communities where everyone’s more or less the same makes it much more difficult to imagine how different life can be for others.

Small-town conservatives (and their big-city expatriates) are the ones who are out of touch with what people who aren’t like them go through. That’s why they believe that racism is yesterday’s news (“post-racial!”), or that Muslims want to take over and impose their religious laws, or that gays want to ruin their marriages and prey on their kids, and other baseless nonsense. They don’t see or talk to those people in their daily lives, so they aren’t forced to learn anything about them. They’re the other. And wanting the other to conform to your customs and ways is how real discrimination is born.

(via Joe.My.God.)