Why Whites Think Blacks Have No Problems

By Tim Wise, AlterNet. Posted July 17, 2001.

Just a few years ago, a public opinion poll indicated that only 6 percent of whites in the U.S. believed racism was still a "very serious" problem facing African Americans. While larger percentages believed racism to be somewhat of a problem, only this anemic share of the white community saw it as an issue of great importance.

When you consider that twice that number -- or as many as 12 percent -- have told pollsters they believe Elvis Presley is still alive, it becomes apparent that delusion has taken on a whole new meaning among the dominant racial majority. Apparently, it is easier for whites to believe that a pill-popping, washed-up lounge singer faked his own death and is playing midnight gigs at some tropical resort, than to believe what black folks say they experience every day.

It makes me think that if ignorance is indeed bliss, then my fellow whites must be among the happiest folks on the planet.

So it was no surprise to read that once again a poll has been released, indicating that whites by and large don't think racial discrimination remains a big problem, and that whites and blacks continue to view issues of racial equality far differently.

According to the recent Gallup Survey on "Black-White Relations," seven out of ten whites believe that blacks are treated equally in their communities: an optimism with which only 40 percent of blacks agree. Eight in ten whites say blacks receive equal educational opportunities, and 83 percent say blacks receive equal housing opportunities in their communities. Only a third of whites believe blacks face racial bias from police in their areas.

Despite the fact that half of all blacks say they have experienced discrimination in the past 30 days, whites persist in believing that we know their realities better than they do, and that black complaints of racism are the rantings of oversensitive racial hypochondriacs. Blacks, we seem to believe, make mountains out of molehills, for Lord knows we would never make a molehill out of a mountain!

That white perceptions of the extent of racial bias are rooted in a stupendous miasma of ignorance is made clear by a number of salient facts. First, as will be shown below, there is the statistical evidence indicating that equal opportunity is the stuff of fiction, not documentary; and secondly, the simple truth that white perceptions of racism's salience have always been splendidly naive. Indeed, as far back as 1963, before there was a Civil Rights Act to outlaw even the most blatant racial discrimination, 60 percent of whites said that blacks were treated equally in their communities. In 1962, only 8 years after the Brown decision outlawed segregation in the nation's schools (but well before schools had actually moved to integrate their classrooms), a stunning 84 percent of whites were convinced that blacks had equal educational opportunity. In other words, white denial of the racism problem is nothing new: it was firmly entrenched even when this nation operated under a formal system of apartheid.

Of course, this ignorance of the lived realities of black people is no surprise. Rather it is in large part the result of our isolation from African Americans in daily life.

More than 80 percent of whites live in virtually all-white neighborhoods, and nearly nine in ten white suburbanites live in communities with less than 1 percent black populations. What's more, only 12 percent of whites in law school today -- who by historical standards have had more opportunity to mix with people of color than any generation before them -- say they had significant interaction with blacks while growing up.

One can only expect this degree of isolation to lead to a skewed perception of what other people experience. After all, if one doesn't know many blacks, or personally witness discrimination, it is all the more likely that one will find the notion of widespread mistreatment hard to digest. Especially when one has been socialized to give more credence to what members of one's own group say, than what the racial "other" tells us is true.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that every time a black person says they have been discriminated against that they are, in fact, correct. Individuals, after all, can misperceive certain situations. But the reality of individual misperception should not lead to the widespread white belief in mass black delusion, which is virtually the only way one can read the Gallup figures.

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