Follow
Following the high-profile killings carried out by police members against African-American people, many Americans feel that more needs to be done to ensure racial equality, according to the new nationwide polls. Activists and politicians seem to believe this too.
The new report issued by the Pew Research Center shows that about 60 percent of the Americans interviewed think not enough is done for the equal rights of people living in the United States. This number is higher by almost 15 percent compared to last year’s 46 percent.
“There’s been a lot of work by a lot of organizations over the years talking about race and poverty and equity. In Newport News, people want to be left alone, they want to be safe and they want everyone to be treated equally,” said Mayor McKinley Price , who has been extremely concerned with the issue.
Only last month, a police officer fatally shot 23-year-old Kawanza Jamal Beaty and people are still waiting for the results of the investigation. Earlier this year, the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody in Baltimore prompted an extremely violent reaction from the people. Michael Brown, another black man died after he was fatally shot by a Ferguson police officer last year.
These cases got a lot of coverage in the media and had people thinking that police officers are generally biased when it comes to African-American suspects and some would not hesitate to mistreat them based on the color of their skin.
The new polls show that the number of white American who believe there is a lot of injustice done against black people is also starting to increase. Thus, polls show that 53 percent of the whites now think there is still much work to be done to have African-Americans benefit from a really fair treatment. This number is up by 14 percent compared to last year’s poll.
Polls also show that most African-Americans think very little is done for them to feel they have equal rights. It was shown that an alarming 90 percent of them believe this.
Moreover, now 50 percent of all Americans consider racism a very big issue, while the polls carried out over the previous years show that only a quarter of them believed that.
The Pew Research Center surveyed about 2,000 people and overall margins of about 2.5 percent were taken into account before releasing the report.
Image Source: shiftdemand
