4/12/21
Americans are divided in their views on the killing of George Floyd. But the biggest division isn’t along racial lines. It’s between Republicans and everyone else. This week, in an Economist/YouGov poll, 64 percent of Americans said police were “not justified in the amount of force they used” in Floyd’s arrest, but only 41 percent of Republicans agreed. Most Americans said former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin should be convicted of murder, but only 31 percent of Republicans agreed. On both questions, Republicans differed sharply, by margins of about 20 percentage points, from independent voters and from white Americans as a whole. People who don’t like integration, or who don’t acknowledge discrimination, have consolidated in the Republican Party. And they’re losing touch with the rest of America. Democrats, predictably, are to the left of the national average on these questions. But in today’s most pressing racial matters, independents tend to side with Democrats, leaving Republicans in the minority. In one recent survey, 40 percent of Americans said “racism in our society” was a big problem. Only 14 percent of Republicans endorsed that view. In another poll, 30 percent of Republicans said “racial inequality” was “not a problem at all.” Republicans are far more likely to say that conservatives face a great deal of discrimination than to say that Black people do.
On all of these questions, Republicans are wildly out of step not just with Democrats, but with political independents and with white Americans as a whole. Racial discomfort and indifference to racism run deep in the GOP. In a CBS News poll taken in January, among Americans who expressed a positive or negative view of “the changing racial diversity in the U.S.,” more than two-thirds said it was a good thing. But among Republicans who expressed a positive or negative view, most said it was bad. Republicans are far more hostile to racial concerns about Georgia’s new election law, far less likely to support reinforcement of the Voting Rights Act, and far less willing to prioritize COVID vaccination of “racial groups who have experienced high rates of illness.” Even “a presidential task force to work on addressing racial inequality in the criminal justice system” is too much for them. In a Morning Consult poll taken in January, voters endorsed that idea by about 40 percentage points. So did white voters. But a plurality of Republicans rejected the idea. Segregation is pernicious. It corrupts everyone, not just by exacerbating inequalities of opportunity and outcome, but also by separating us into communities, classes, and factions that don’t connect with one another. Most Americans don’t share the racial attitudes that prevail in today’s GOP, and that’s a good thing.
