Via Matt Yglesias, I found this to be really odd. I keep meaning to write more about the extremely “off” racial attitudes displayed by some white folks in this election season.
The latest New York Times/CBS News poll was conducted earlier this month. In with all of the other questions was this one: “Just as your best guess, about what percentage of all Americans are black: less than 10%, between 10 and 20%, between 20 and 30%, between 30 and 50%, or more than 50%?”
According to the last U.S. Census, the racial breakdown goes like this: Whites are 75.1% of the U.S. population, Blacks are 12.3%. And even if you don’t get the exact percentage right, it’s important to get the overall sense that African Americans and other racial groups are called minorities because they don’t make up a majority of the population.
Less than a quarter of respondents, both White and African American, got it right. You can kind of see that some African Americans, depending on where they live, might overestimate the numbers. But it also shows that most whites overestimated the numbers. For example, 33% of white respondents think African Americans make up one-third to a half of the population and 8% think they make up more than half.
Who the frig are these people? You run the country, you make up most of the population, people with your racial identity are in positions of authority and are visible in the media, and you still feel like you’re outnumbered?