Americans Think Race Relations Are Getting Worse
Article excerpt
We asked the public about fairness in our latest edition of The Honesty Project. It turns out America is divided in some unexpected ways, writes Mene Ukueberuwa.
Welcome back to The Honesty Project, a new series of opinion surveys from The Free Press. We’re asking Americans what they believe about the most important issues in public life, from political violence to the AI revolution. And we’re going deeper than a typical poll. We partnered with Populace, an opinion-research think tank, to design surveys that gauge respondents’ “private” opinions, the views they feel are too sensitive to share publicly. Our goal is to overcome the bias inherent in polls, which often elicit less-than-honest responses, and to understand what parts of American life people don’t feel they can speak about freely.
Our first edition last week asked questions related to the health of America’s civic life. And we discovered some disturbing trends. View the previous round of results here.
Today, many of our questions address fairness and equality in American life. That includes meritocracy in hiring, the value of hard work, the ethics of Donald Trump’s presidency, and more. We found that:
, Most Americans believe Trump’s inner circle is enriching itself at the public expense.
, A majority of Americans say publicly that race relations have gotten worse over the last five years. A minority of Republicans agree in public, but that figure rises to 59 percent for privately held views.
, Only 13 percent of blacks say in private that merit should trump representation in hiring, though a majority say so publicly.
, Among blacks, Generation Z, and the working-class, support for letting illegal immigrants who haven’t committed violent crimes remain in the U.S. drops significantly in private.
For a closer look at the methodology we use to capture people’s privately held views, watch our explainer video below, and view our full methodology here.
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