Agnostic claimed most whites are friendly towards it. I decided to check the GSS.
Text for ‘JOBAFF’
534. Some people say that because of past discrimination, blacks
should be given preference in hiring and promotion. Others say
that such preference in hiring and promotion of blacks is wrong
because it discriminates against others. What about your opinion
– are you for or against preferential hiring and promotion of
blacks? Do you favor/oppose preference in hiring and promotion
strongly or not strongly?
| Frequency Distribution | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N |
RACE | ||||
| 1 WHITE |
2 BLACK |
3 OTHER |
ROW TOTAL |
||
| JOBAFF | 1: STRONGLY FOR PREF | 4.0 46.0 |
44.2 77.9 |
8.8 4.9 |
9.3 128.8 |
| 2: FOR PREFERENCE | 5.1 59.0 |
16.3 28.7 |
9.8 5.4 |
6.7 93.1 |
|
| 3: AGAINST PREFERENCE | 19.0 220.8 |
17.8 31.4 |
28.4 15.7 |
19.3 267.9 |
|
| 4: STRONGLY AGAINST PREF | 71.9 834.1 |
21.8 38.4 |
52.9 29.2 |
64.8 901.7 |
|
| COL TOTAL | 100.0 1,159.9 |
100.0 176.4 |
100.0 55.2 |
100.0 1,391.5 |
|
| Means | 3.59 | 2.17 | 3.25 | 3.40 | |
| Std Devs | .76 | 1.21 | .97 | .96 | |
| Unweighted N | 1,149 | 180 | 55 | 1,384 | |
Text for ‘AFFRMACT’
153. Some people say that because of past discrimination, blacks
should be given preference in hiring and promotion. Others say
that such preference in hiring and promotion of blacks is wrong
because it discriminates against whites. What about your opinion
– are you for or against preferential hiring and promotion of
blacks? If favors: Do you favor preference in hiring and
promotion strongly or not strongly? If opposes: Do you oppose
preference in hiring and promotion strongly or not strongly?
| Frequency Distribution | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cells contain: -Column percent -Weighted N |
RACE | ||||
| 1 WHITE |
2 BLACK |
3 OTHER |
ROW TOTAL |
||
| AFFRMACT | 1: STRONGLY SUPPORT PREF | 5.4 493.7 |
33.8 500.7 |
14.5 134.1 |
9.8 1,128.4 |
| 2: SUPPORT PREF | 5.8 535.7 |
12.6 187.1 |
8.3 77.0 |
6.9 799.9 |
|
| 3: OPPOSE PREF | 26.4 2,421.7 |
23.3 346.0 |
32.1 297.3 |
26.5 3,065.0 |
|
| 4: STRONGLY OPPOSE PREF | 62.3 5,711.9 |
30.3 449.5 |
45.1 417.8 |
56.9 6,579.1 |
|
| COL TOTAL | 100.0 9,163.0 |
100.0 1,483.2 |
100.0 926.2 |
100.0 11,572.4 |
|
| Means | 3.46 | 2.50 | 3.08 | 3.30 | |
| Std Devs | .83 | 1.24 | 1.05 | .97 | |
| Unweighted N | 9,126 | 1,610 | 821 | 11,557 | |
Entitled to an Opinion 
October 13, 2010 at 12:51 am
Be more accurate in your phrasing of the context. Here the wording matters. I said it doesn’t go over well when framed as quotas — i.e. “preferences” in hiring and promotion.
In the context of the post, I’m talking about whites supporting policies that help out blacks because of what whites (and blacks) perceive as bad luck or discrimination that blacks suffer more from than whites.
In the ’70s when the AA bandwagon took off, roughly 40% of whites said that the lower station of blacks was due to discrimination (RACDIF1).
However, re-word it to ask about discrimination in housing (BLKHOUSE), and 34% of whites say there’s “a lot” of discrimination, with another 41% saying there’s “some.” Focusing on jobs (BLKJOBS), 27% of whites say there’s “a lot” of discrimination, with another 47% saying there’s “some.”
Similar figures hold for white views on discrimination in housing and jobs for Hispanics (about 20% say “a lot” and 50% say “some”). For Asians, whites see a lot less discrimination (only about 10% say “a lot” and 50% say “some”).
Obviously when a majority of whites see discrimination at work behind blacks and Hispanics languishing in the job and housing markets, they’re open-minded to programs that claim to alleviate these inequities.
Whites only get mad when they perceive the policies go into overkill and result in quotas (“preferences”), which are patently unfair.
In the context of the original post, which was about how a larger welfare state might sink the economy or society, quotas for blacks and Hispanics don’t make much difference. It turned out to be the inoffensive practice of knocking down lending standards so that blacks and Hispanics could own houses and enjoy the American dream, as well as live where they wanted without redlining.
October 13, 2010 at 5:49 pm
I find it most interesting that 50% think there is some discrimination against Asians. Usually they’re treated as implicitly white.
I’d still like to see you provide data on opinion toward actual policy/programs.
October 14, 2010 at 6:07 pm
Asians are the group most impacted by state affirmative action. See California Asian college enrollment after the end of affirmative action in California colleges. Whites stayed at the same levels why the number of Asians doubled or tripled.
October 13, 2010 at 3:34 pm
Agnostic,
Anywhere you actually let the people vote on it, they vote down affirmative action pretty hard, even when they’re (usually) outspent by huge margins y their opponents and even when the ballot language is framed in a way advantageous to the status quo. Affirmative action and immigration are two issues where the elite of the country is massively out of step with the non-elite. I expect you can only expect opinions on AA to harden as the employment scene continues to stagnate.
October 13, 2010 at 5:11 pm
I wonder if elites favor things like Affirmative Action because they don’t feel that they deserve their status and conclude that status in general must not be deserved.
Or is it just a matter of trying to look good in other people’s eyes?
October 13, 2010 at 5:39 pm
See Affirmative Action Isn’t About Uplift.
October 15, 2010 at 8:58 am
I think Half Sig has said that poll results on this question vary widely depending on framing. What Jehu says makes sense to me. A vote is a truer poll, despite the fact that the framing on various votes in different states is not standardized.
> Focusing on jobs (BLKJOBS), 27% of whites say there’s “a lot” of discrimination, with another 47% saying there’s “some.”
This is awfully vague, or maybe just devious, if there is no definition of the key word. Obviously I endeavor to avoid blacks on the street if dressed ‘anti-civilizationally.’ There must be few who do not try to avoid those. There aren’t really any gangster whites or mestizos around here, but if there were I’d avoid them too, though less diffidently, since they’d be more likely into working drugs/hookers/poker and not too into messing with me. Naturally I don’t mind walking past or along with a whole bunch of black folks, if they are dressed pro-civ. I think it’s pretty clear that some would term this discrimination and others wouldn’t. The number who wouldn’t will probably decrease over the course of our mildly to moderately dysphoric future. Therefore, the poll question is underdetermined.
October 15, 2010 at 7:49 pm
40 years of debate over affirmative action for blacks in the USA is amazing. I get tired of this topic in a few minutes usually.
I’m more interested in the uniqueness of high level of quantitative achievement/aptitude of relatively dark skinned indians, compared to people of similarly dark complexions on the rest of the planet.
There doesn’t seem to be any highest end quantitatively apt sub-saharan africans, pacific islanders, or mixed and indigenous South Americans despite similarly huge populations to draw from.
Because of that, I’d like to see racial categorization based on complexion rather than ancestral narrative. That way, we could have technocratic silicon valley superstar types representing dark skinned people in the social pageantry.
I think B-1 Visa immigrants and their smartest children should be positioning themselves as authentic fellow-travelers with southern and urban blacks and southwestern and urban latinos, the way WASPy Warren Buffet types posture as representatives of ordinary white Americans.
The current silly situation is analogous to if a lot of the best American resource managers of Chinese descent were replaced by the best available Malays, because we had affirmative action for Malays but none for East and Pacific Asians as a general category.
October 17, 2010 at 5:15 pm
Don’t get your hopes up. Most whites have above median incomes, making it easier for them to see the elite as somewhat representative of them. Adopting a Sailerian lens of kinship we can say that they are more likely to actually have some relatives in the upper-stratum.
We currently have a strange “asian” category that includes bouth south & east asians. Both are stereotypically studious. I wonder how perceptions were change if we had a large Malay population.