(Reuters) - About
40 percent of white Americans and about 25 percent of non-white
Americans are surrounded exclusively by friends of their own race,
according to an ongoing Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The figures highlight how
segregated the United States remains in the wake of a debate on race
sparked by last month's acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of
unarmed black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin. President Barack Obama weighed in after the verdict, calling for Americans to do some "soul searching" on whether they harbor racial prejudice.
There
are regions and groups where mixing with people of other races is more
common, especially in the Hispanic community where only a tenth do not
have friends of a different race. About half of Hispanics who have a
spouse or partner are in a relationship with non-Hispanics, compared to
one tenth of whites and blacks in relationships.
Looking
at a broader circle of acquaintances to include coworkers as well as
friends and relatives, 30 percent of Americans are not mixing with
others of a different race, the poll showed.
Respondent
Kevin Shaw, 49, has experienced both integration and racial homogeny.
He grew up in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and attended a mixed high
school where he was one of only two white teenagers on the mostly black
football team. His wife, Bobbi, is Hispanic. They met in high school and
have been married for 27 years.
Eleven
years ago, they moved to a predominantly white neighborhood in the
suburb of Liberty. "Soon after we moved in, my mother-in-law came to
visit and a neighbor asked if she was my maid. It was just a matter of
ignorance," he said.
In the time he has lived there the neighborhood has become less blinkered, helped by the arrival of younger families.
He also puts prevailing attitudes down to environment. "A lot of it comes down to where you grow up," he said.
As
a group, Pacific states - including California, the most populous in
the nation - are the most diverse when it comes to love and friendship.
By contrast, the South has the lowest percentage of people with more
than five acquaintances from races that don't reflect their own.
Some
of this is down to precedent. "This country has a pretty long history
of restriction on inter-racial contact and for whites and blacks, even
though it's in the past, there are still echoes of this," said Ann
Morning, an associate professor in the department of sociology at New
York University.
"Hispanics and Asian Americans have traditionally had less strict lines about integrating."
In his comments two weeks ago, President Obama
expressed optimism about the future, saying his daughters' experiences
show younger generations have fewer issues with race. "It doesn't mean
we're in a post-racial society. It doesn't mean that racism is
eliminated. But...they're better than we are, they're better than we
were, on these issues," he said.
Younger
American adults appear to confirm this, according to the poll. About
one third of Americans under the age of 30 who have a partner or spouse
are in a relationship with someone of a different race, compared to one
tenth of Americans over 30. And only one in 10 adults under 30 say no
one among their families, friends or coworkers is of a different race,
less than half the rate for Americans as a whole.
"My
Mom's school, they had ended segregation, but she told me there was
still basically one side of the road for whites and one side of the road
for blacks," respondent Carlon Carter, 18, said.
A keen athlete and music fan, his racially diverse group of friends in Birmingham, Alabama, comes from these shared interests.
"There's
a big difference now. We don't see each other so much like 'you're
white and I'm black'. If you like the same thing I like, then that's all
that matters," he said.
These
results were taken from the ongoing Reuters/Ipsos online poll and
include the responses of 4,170 Americans between July 24th and August
6th. The credibility interval, a measure of precision, for these results
is plus or minus about 2.7 percentage points for a five-day average on
any given day during that period. Smaller subsets of the poll, such as
blacks, Hispanics and adults under 30, have a credibility interval for
that period ranging from about 3 percentage points to 11 percentage
points.
The race and ethnicity
questions in this story are part a polling project that started in
January 2012, surveying about 11,000 people a month since then. More
information on the these questions and hundreds of others asked since
the poll began can be found at polling.reuters.com/
(Reporting By Lindsay Dunsmuir and Maurice Tamman; Editing by Claudia Parsons)
1 comMENTS:
When the lion lays down with the lamb and the sparrow and eagle eat millet at the bird table, then we can say that racism is unnatural. Segregation and racism is as natural as the sunrise, it is only the 'liberalists' and zionist powers that be, who promote integration of the races - for the sole purpose of the destruction of the more superior white race (and they are making progress)hence, there is a hybrid-negroid-muslim thing in the White House! Be afraid, be very afraid.....
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