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While reading the news online this week, I found two articles about recent polls that amazed me. The first was an article about the results of a recent Pew Research Center global attitude survey that found that “Anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish feelings are rising in several major European countries,” according to The New York Times. The second was accessed via msnbc.com, reporting on a recent AP-Yahoo News poll finding “40 percent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks, and that includes many Democrats and independents.”
Fifty percent or more of people in Spain and Germany have “negative attitudes” toward Muslims, while 46 percent and 38 percent feel the same way in Poland and France, respectively. Negative attitudes are held toward Jews by anywhere from 20 percent of people in France to 46 percent in Spain.
The AP-Yahoo survey said that 20 percent of all whites felt that the word “violent” strongly applied to blacks – 22 percent agreed with “boastful” and 29 percent agreed with “complaining.” According to msnbc.com’s article on the poll, “Nearly 4 in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they ‘try harder.’”
Wait . what? It’s easy for a bleeding-heart liberal like me to take for granted the fact that racism is a minor problem these days, until confronted with numbers like these that bring me back down from my leftist pipe-dreams and into the real world. How does this happen?
The more I thought about it though, the more I felt that even though I don’t hold these sentiments, I know people who do. I have heard many people in my life say things similar to what I read in those two articles. I have heard the phrase “I don’t hate black people but .” countless times in my life – especially from people one or two generations older than me – and it’s scary to know that “the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the candidates in 2004.”
As far as I am concerned, if the number of people voting based on race is larger than the number who decides the election, something is terribly wrong. Actually, if any Americans vote based on race, something is terribly wrong. Many people would like to think that we live in a post-race world, and that it is not something we need to discuss anymore, but it is clear that this simply is not the fact. The majority of Americans – those who do not harbor racist sentiments – need to be far more pro-active in combating racism in their own country, as do those in Europe.
To be clear, I am not talking about the censorship of racism – I’m talking about the education of racists. Often times, it is as simple as cutting off your friend who starts saying “I’m not a racist but .” Let them know that there is no “but.” Racism will not go away until the enlightened majority recognizes that it does indeed still exist and goes about destroying it.
Mario Moretto is Opinion Editor for The Maine Campus and doesn’t hate racists, but …
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