Poles apart on survey’s conclusions

Should a poll’s results be left for the reader to assess, or should those who conduct the survey take it upon themselves to interpret it for us?

That question arises from a recent poll on racial disparities commissioned by the Umass Lowell Center for Public Opinion.

According to the university’s statement in announcing the results, “The center conducted an independent, nonpartisan national survey asking 1,000 respondents about race, discrimination and systemic racism and found from policing, to the economy to the workplace, race divides Americans’ views of many issues.”

While not everyone would agree with all the assumptions baked into that statement, the results did indicate a decided difference of opinion in most – but not all – questions posed.

However, that generally accurate observation apparently didn’t suffice for some individuals who designed and analyzed the poll’s results.

For example, the survey indicated that Blacks were five times more likely than whites to say they were treated differently by police, with 38% of Blacks saying so to just 7% of whites.

“The idea in this country that there is discrimination in law enforcement does not come from the news for many people of color — it comes from personal experiences,” concluded Joshua Dyck, director of the Center for Public Opinion and associate professor of political science.

Did the survey’s directors handpick Black people who happened to have interactions with police, or are their responses just anecdotal or derived from other secondhand information?

There were also areas of agreement that bucked the survey’s overall theme.

Support for defunding police was almost evenly split, with answers from all respondents falling within the poll’s 4% margin of error. That suggests that roughly half of those surveyed want to preserve the ability of police to maintain law and order

large majority also favored local citizen-review boards for police made up of racially representative community members, with 65% either favoring the idea or strongly favoring it.

However, that consensus completely dissipated when the survey’s subject veered to economic opportunity.

While 53% of respondents believe Blacks often face discrimination when looking for work, 83% of Blacks agreed with that premise. That stark racial imbalance also extended into the area of education equality.

However, we take exception to the broad-brush conclusions extrapolated from this survey, including those of Mona Kleinberg, assistant professor of political science who helped design and analyzed the poll: “To me the biggest take-away from this survey is that our data show that whites do not connect the disadvantages faced by Blacks to their own advantage. Whites have yet to understand the full extent of the privileges structural racism bestows upon them. While many whites readily say that Blacks are discriminated against, they do not see how the lack of opportunity for Blacks translates into more opportunities for whites.”

This general assumption runs through Kleinberg’s statement – the proposition that one race’s disadvantage automatically equals another’s gain.

Inequalities that continue to exist today primarily can be attributed to income, in which race certainly plays a part.

A nation succeeds as a whole when the least fortunate among us receive the opportunity to reach their potential.

We’re not there yet – as these high-profile examples of egregious police behavior have demonstrated – but we’re far removed from what these few inexcusable actions suggest.

Yes, race obviously plays into an individual’s perceptions of reality, but trying to lay a guilt trip on one portion of the population does a disservice to all people, and helps perpetuate – rather than ameliorate – our country’s racial divisions. Stick to your opening statement, and let the poll’s responses speak for themselves.