It was shocking to read about a study from Tufts University that found some white people believe that they have replaced blacks as the primary victims of racial discrimination in contemporary America. According to the study from researchers at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. Both whites and blacks agree that anti-black racism has decreased over the last 60 years. The study’s findings show that America has not achieved the “post-racial” society that some predicted in the wake of Barack Obama’s election. “It’s a pretty surprising to find when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show black Americans with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health and employment,” said Tufts Associate Professor of Psychology Samuel Sommers, Ph.D., and co-author of Whites See Racism as a Zero-sum Game that They Are Now Losing.
Sommers and co-author Michael I. Norton of Harvard asked a nation-wide sample of 208 blacks and 209 whites to indicate the extent to which they felt blacks and whites were the targets of discrimination in each decade from the 1950s to the 2000s. A scale of 1 to 10 was used, with 1 being “not at all” and 10 being “very much. White and black estimates of bias in the 1950s were similar. Both groups acknowledged little racism against whites at that time but substantial racism against blacks. However, whites believed that racism against whites has increased significantly as racism against blacks has decreased. On average, whites rated anti-white bias as more prevalent in the 2000s than anti-black bias by more than a full point on the 10-point scale. Moreover, some 11 percent of whites gave anti-white bias the maximum rating of 10 compared to only 2 percent of whites who rated anti-black bias a 10. Blacks, however, reported only a modest increase in their perceptions of ‘reverse racism. What is your opinion of this study?
