White Republicans and Independents are Starting to Acknowledge Their Privilege, But Will It Last?
By Brian Schaffner
The protests following George Floyd’s murder appear to have had a dramatic impact on public opinion. For example, Michael Tesler has summarized shifting attitudes towards police, Black Lives Matter, and the existence of racism in a number of recent polls.
Since 2016, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study has been asking a set of questions designed by Chris DeSante and Candis Smith aimed at capturing the degree to which Americans acknowledge the existence of racism in the country. One item in particular asks respondents how much they agree or disagree with a simple statement:
“White people in the U.S. have certain advantages because of the color of their skin.”
This item effective captures the willingness of individuals to acknowledge white privilege or their motivation to deny it. In 2016, this denial of white privilege was strongly associated with voting for Trump and was even a strong predictor of switching from voting for Obama in 2012 to backing Trump in 2016. The acknowledgement or denial of racism continued to be a strong predictor of vote choices in House races in 2018.
Last week, we asked this same question on the Data for Progress Covid-19 tracking poll to see whether the events of the past several weeks had made any difference in how people see white privilege in the U.S. In order to maximize comparability with the CCES surveys, I re-weighted the Data for Progress poll so that it matched the 2019 CCES survey’s demographic and political characteristics.
The changes have been dramatic.
In 2016, only 43% of white American adults somewhat or strongly agreed that white people have advantages in the U.S.; nearly twice as many African Americans (84%) agreed with the statement in that same year. However, when we asked this question again on June 9th, 57% of whites acknowledged the existence of white privilege -- an increase of 14 percentage points over 2016 and even a 12 point increase over views registered in November 2019.
Notably, the increased acknowledgement of racism among whites spans all generations. Over half of Millennials and Gen Z adults already agreed that whites have advantages even prior to this year, but now two-thirds acknowledge white privilege. Agreement with the statement hovered around 40% for older generations, but more than half of both groups agreed in our June poll.
While the patterns are similar across generations, it is across partisan groups where we see the key differences; namely, the increased acknowledgement of white privilege appears to have come exclusively from white Republicans and independents. The vast majority of white Democrats already acknowledged their privilege -- about three-fourths of white Democrats consistently agree that whites have advantages. But denial of white privilege was far more common among other white Americans prior to the recent protests. Just 8 months ago, in November of 2019, only about one-third of white independents agreed that whites have advantages and fewer than one-in-five white Republicans agreed with that statement. If anything, white Republicans had been trending slightly towards even greater denial by 2018. But now acknowledgement of white privilege among these groups has increased dramatically. Over half of white independents (55%) now agree that whites have advantages in the U.S. and 44% of white Republicans also register agreement with that statement.
Of course, while the data show a dramatic increase in acknowledgement of white privilege among these groups, there are many reasons for any optimism to be cautious. First, even with the strong increase in acknowledgement of white privilege among Republicans and Independents, it is still the case that about half of non-Democratic whites still do not acknowledge that whites have advantages because of the color of their skin. Thus, while opinion appears to have changed dramatically, there is still a long way to go. Second, it is impossible to know whether this increased acknowledgment of white privilege will persist once the protests have subsided and peoples’ attention has shifted. Indeed, it is crucial for activists, news organizations, and politicians to ensure that we continue to confront systemic racism so that this increased acknowledgement of the problem does not prove to be ephemeral.
Finally, it is one thing to acknowledge white privilege in a survey and quite another to support (or take) real action to address systemic racism in America. Recent polls do show strong support for reforming law enforcement, but this is just one piece of the widespread discrimination that people of color face in America. What remains to be seen is whether the public’s increased acknowledgement of racism will ultimately translate into the political will to take the dramatic steps necessary to address it.
Brian F. Schaffner (@b_schaffner) is the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies at Tisch College and the Department of Political Science at Tufts University.