1,105 people surveyed...sounds like they pulled out all the stops here.

Really?

You? Really?

Where am I? What year is this?

In my interactions with numerous people and the multi-culture nature of my circle of friends... I have found the results of this study consistant with the concerns I've heard expressed.

But what I find most appealing in your article, is the sentiments you express in your last paragraph... especially the last few lines.

Nicely said...

According to these guys, 1000 is a pretty standard sample for measuring the opinions of Americans.

*sigh*

It would be nice if all users on every forum everywhere figured out how statistics worked before they came up with winning opinions like the above.

Not to mention: knew the costs that deploying a large scale survey involves.

That;s because there are only about 1000 people in the US who actually like to be surveilled...I mean surveyed.

"They also said they believe racial tensions in the United States will ease over the next 10 years."

not at the rate we're going
2007 will forever be remembered as "the year racism got trendy again"

every other day someones hanging a noose somewhere

I can't help it.

That's still going on today in places. When my mother and her new husband were courting, the locals in his neighborhood (lovely Camden, NJ) took none too kindly to a Puerto Rican going out of "the pool" and dating a white woman. One social commentator went as far as to put two bottles on the stoop of his porch side-by-side, one brown, one white. Granted this was a poor neighborhood mainly consisting of Puerto Ricans that only excelled at failing in life. The black ex-pimp across the street approved, however.

While racism is based in ignorance and fear, none-the-less what happened to the freedoms of America that grant everyone to hate everyone else? Or are we only tolerant of "enlightened" points of view? My sister in law is from South Africa and when she was here I picked up on some racial biases she has and was disgusted by it. However if she wants to believe them and act on them, should she not be afforded that right? Why does she have to like anyone who's different? I'm not saying she should be allowed to harm or injure anyone else (in all terms of that word) but where in the Constitution does it offer the right not to be offended? Racists are idiots but they have the right to be stupid.

As for what race relations will be like in 10 years? I think people over time, be it 10 years, 5 years, or 25 years, will assimilate into a new ideal of the American melting pot and when that time comes, if America is still the great country it is today, there will be a new group of people clamoring to come here for the freedoms and they will be hated as well. To the victors go the spoils, as they say. Every group that has ever fought for equality, when they finally achieve it, fight to maintain their status quo and superior position they've gained and never want it threatened or even equaled. It is, in my opinion, a sad fact of human nature.

Wait, what? Are you kidding me. If by enlightened points of view you mean those that aren't ignorant and uniformed then yes. I can't even grasp the absurdity of the idea that racists should be allowed to be racist because "hey it's a free country" enough to formulate a good reply

But that's exactly my point. Why should your point of view be more valid than a racist's? Why must he conform to your point of view that says all races must be accept and the love thy neighbor as yourself. Why can't some guy hate another person because he has different skin color if he isn't beating him, firing him, attacking him, etc? Maybe I just like living with my own color or religion or whatever. Should I have to desegregate my neighborhood to achieve a racial balance and through exposure learn to like to live with others? That is taking away another's rights and imposing your point of the view. Unless you maintain your view is superior to all others which I am willing to accept. If you're right and everyone else is wrong, prove it and I'll follow.

I am, for whatever strange reason, as optimistic as some of you about time improving these issues in the US. I am not, however, convinced that the fundamental problems that drive these issues -- that make them resurface, etc. -- will go away any time soon. We sure like our stories of progressive tolerance in America. We like to say how just a short while ago it was crazy racist or homophobic and now people are slightly more tolerant, gays have their own sitcoms, and me and my black girlfriend can go to the Target without getting the hairy eyeball.

But we consistently disregard the fact that the gross privatization of our society has and is continuing to devastate the working and middle classes, depositing massive amounts of wealth in the hands of the few. And this experience has gone global, and for some time now.

Inequalities start with economics, guys. As long as their has been capitalism there has been racism, and racism is a convenient tool of the powerful. "It's not your government (democrat and republican alike) that sold you out, that signed free trade agreements and sent millions of jobs overseas, it's those other people -- they took your jobs, they sell crack, they they they they." It's a distraction from the real problem.

But hey, maybe we should qualify things. ;-) In ten years, those of us who have health care, fair wages, live in nice privately secured ex-urb and can afford all of the silly accoutrements of the age,will be tolerant and open to mixed race, same sex, whatever. Those who can get out of the flood waters, those who can pay five bucks a gallon, those who have reserved their beach front property in Alaska -- they'll be such nice, wonderful, open minded people.

And it'll be just those other people, those fuckups on the outside that'll hold to these cro-magnon beliefs. You know. Poor people.

Unfortunately, with freedom of speech, we have to take the bad with the good. If we open the door to legally defining what is acceptable or unacceptable speech and thought, then we risk that meter being moved in a direction we do not like when a different mindset is prevalent.

For example, if we were to start banning forms of discriminatory speech, then what would happen when someone were to say... criticize a political figure who was also a religious zealot? That public figure could (at least try to) make the case that any adverse speech towards his or her political actions was discriminatory towards his/her religion.

Our civil libel laws protect individuals who are injured by patently false statements. But the absolute freedom of speech afforded by the US, also allows for parody and satire of public figures who have profound influence on the nation.

Personally, I've always felt that the best way to defeat hate speech is to allow it to be seen for it's stupidity and evil. If it's forced into hiding and allowed to fester, than it often gains a mystique and underground credibility that suckers in new converts.