The opinion poll firm Gallup took note of recent death of two black men in the hands of the police in Louisiana and Minnesota and the killings of five police officers by a sniper in Dallas, to review their data about Americans opinion on the police and the criminal justice system.
All the data were collected prior the incidents, but they shed revealing results. For example, white people have more confidence in the police than black people. Gallup Editor-in-Chief, Frank Newport, combined data from the last three years of the annual update on confidence in institutions and found a 29 percent gap in the perception between the two racial groups: 58 percent of white have confidence in the police, while 29% of African-American don’t.
“The racial gap in confidence in the police is not new and has been evident throughout the past decade and a half in Gallup’s measurement of confidence in institutions”, Newport writes.
An article from The New York Times reminds us that a long string of black victims in the hands of the police preceded these of Louisiana and Minnesota, in Staten Island, Cleveland, Baltimore, Ferguson, Missouri and North Charleston, S.C, among others, “that have stoked outrage around the country”. The newspaper remarks that these encounters, most of which have been caught on video, “have led to intense debate about race relations and law enforcement”.
However, despite the gap in the confidence in the police between racial groups, the institution is the third-most-highly rated of the 15 that Gallup tested just last June, behind the military and small business, the editor-in-chief writes.
When asked about a more concrete matter, as to how the police treats racial minorities, Gallup found, in a recent update from June 7 to July 1st, nearly a week prior the events, than 50 percent of African-Americans perceive a fair treatment and 48 percent an unfair treatment, according to a 2015 measurement: they are divided into halves. Meanwhile, three quarters of white people felt racial minorities were fairly treated by the police. However, when these groups had to confront the treatment of police of one racial group against the other, proportions changed: 67 percent of African-American answered police treat them less fairly than the white people of their communities. This is how “significant majorities of blacks” have perceived this historically, Gallup states, as opposed to white people who are less likely to perceive minority mistreatment by police.
But African-American are less likely to report these incidents. Only 16 to 18 percent of them do so, according to the polls.
Of course the gap between black and white emerges when asked how they perceive honesty and ethics of police officers, because of their experience with the police. Newport compared the data of 2013 to 2015 and he found a substancial difference between them as a result: 60 percent of white value the honesty of police as very high or high, while only 28 percent of black men do so. Overall, 56 percent of Americans lead police to a fifth place behind nurses, pharmacists, medical doctors and high school teachers.
Strangely enough, when asked as a whole, no racial distinction, when asked if the criminal justice system in the US is biased against African-American, up to 49 percent of people answered yes in the most updated poll. But there are gaps again in a breakdown of the question. “Perceptions of bias have risen among both whites and blacks, although a large gap remains between these two groups. As of the June 7-July 1 survey, 76% of blacks say that the justice system is biased against blacks, compared with 45% of whites”.
Then comes the question: Are American people worried about racial relations and do they see this as a problem? A March Gallup poll found that 35 percent of them are worried “a great deal” about this, a number higher than at any time since Gallup first asked the question in 2001. The percentage remained below 20 percent between 2007 and 2014. When going into polls of 2015 and 2016, differences arise again: 53 percent of black people said they worry a great deal about this, but just 27 percent of white men joined them. “Even with the recent increase, however, worry about race relations is much lower than worry about a number of other issues and problems, including healthcare, the economy, and crime and violence”, Newport writes.
Actually, racism is noticed as a top problem only by 5 to 7 percent of American people who was interviewed along the first semester of 2016. In June, the problem was tied with other problems for sixth place. African-American are more keen to talk about race as a major problem, for obvious reasons.
In the aftermath of the events of last week, another New York Times article pondered: “Just days after the United States celebrated its 240th birthday, people in interviews across the country said that the nation increasingly felt mired in bloodshed and blame, and that despite pleas for compassion and unity, it was fracturing along racial and ideological lines into angry camps of liberals against conservatives, Black Lives Matter against Blue Lives Matter, protesters against the police. Whose side were you on? Which victims did you mourn?”
In fact, the bottom line for Gallup’s analysis is that the gap between black and white in the perception of the police is fundamental. “When and how this fundamental aspect of contemporary race relations in the United States can be addressed and solutions found remains to be seen”.
NBC News contributed with an interesting fact, amidst the reports of last week incidents. Talking about minorities, based on the The Counted project of The Guardian, they found that the police killed even more Native American people than African-American: 3,4 per million against 3,23 per million.