The number of Americans who believe that “racism against whites is widespread” has jumped this year, according to the results of a Gallup survey released Wednesday.
Forty-one percent of respondents to the poll told the research firm that they think White Americans suffer from “widespread” discrimination, up from 33 percent in 2015.
The uptick comes after the same survey showed Americans increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that whites in the US are victims of systemic bigotry. Between 2009 and 2015, the percentage of Americans who agreed with the theory had steadily declined, from a peak of 44 percent.
The increase also comes amid the once-improbable success of Donald Trump’s primary campaign—one fueled by anti-Latino racism, Islamophobia, and fawning praise for law enforcement officers, in defense of cops’ documented, excessive fatal force against Black Americans.
Nearly half of Trump supporters described African Americans as more “violent” and “criminal” than whites, in a Reuters/Ipsos poll released in June.
“In smaller, but still significant, numbers, Clinton backers also viewed blacks more critically than whites with regard to certain personality traits,” Reuters also noted. “Nearly one-third of Clinton supporters described blacks as more ‘violent’ and “criminal’ than whites, and one-quarter described them as more “lazy” than whites.”
Wednesday’s Gallup poll also showed a small increase this year in the number of Americans who believe that racism against black people is “widespread.” Sixty-one percent of poll respondents said, in 2016, they agreed with that characterization of anti-black racism in America, up from 60 percent in 2015.
Over the past decade, the percentage of Americans who believe that “racism against blacks is widespread” had steadily increased, until this year, alongside the decline of those who believe the same about anti-white discrimination. In 2009, only 51 percent of whites said they believed that “racism against blacks is widespread.”
