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Top Issues White Folks Fret About

By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column

     As many of you know by now, I spend a considerable amount of time involved in scientific polling of current cultural issues. My company, Kassie & Reiner (I am a silent partner) engages in what is known in the trade parlance as, “street interviews.”

     Our objective is to stay within a margin of error of minus one or plus one. We conduct our samplings only at the following locales: gas stations, minor league baseball games, convenience stores, churches, supermarkets, barber shops, flea markets, college gathering spots and gun shows.
 


Lafe Tolliver, Esq

     Due to the recent and highly toxic political discussions regarding race, politics and immigration; and the inflammable comments by President Trump regarding his disdain of people of color who criticize the American government, we decided to track those sentiments with a new survey.

     Over a course of three weeks, our canvassers were able to interview and screen (to weed out duplicate names and those who were intoxicated or did not complete all the proffered questions) 3,700 white ethnic persons.

     Our survey was limited to white persons who were American citizens and whose parents were not recent immigrants.

Our goal was to find 12 issues that white Americans either found fearful about minorities or issues that they wanted to talk about but were reluctant to discuss in mixed raced company.

     The results that we obtained were both profound and troubling since it present a snapshot of the United States that is in the throes of finding its cultural identity which is now being recast with significant minority populations with whom they did not grow up with or do they know on a personal basis.

     We also were deeply troubled to gauge from our extensive survey that many white Americans are operating with either wholly incorrect information about people of color, or they obtain their “facts” from biased sources which have a political agenda to bring them into their narrow ideologies.

    So, with that in mind, here are the summations of our findings about the current state of race relations in America:

ONE:  Seventy-Two percent of White America is woefully and sometimes willfully ignorant of American history when it comes to the issues of slavery and its aftermath of Jim Crow, civil rights, current residential and employment biases and white institutional creation and support of discrimination. They are in denial of their history regarding America’s, “original sin.”

TWO: Sixty-Two percent of White America resent a national holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and do not understand February being designated Black History Month. The thought of the black freedom fighter Harriet Tubman being placed on the 20-dollar bill causes many to wonder what is happening to “their” America.

THREE: Although they constantly see media images of inter-racial marriages, 70 percent say they are not in favor of their child (especially their daughters) marrying outside of their “race.” The thought of being grandparents to “butterscotch” children and having those children at family reunions, gives them grave concerns.

FOUR: Fifty-one percent believe that too much publicity is given to police shootings of black males, because the victims probably “deserved” what happened to them despite evidence many times to the contrary.

FIVE: Eighty-two percent believe that “black on black” crime affirms their primary fears of associating with black people since it portrays the image that all black people are short tempered and inherently violent.

SIX:  The thought of reparations causes 94 percent of White America to have outright disgust because they believe that slavery is over and done with; and that everyone should pull their own weight and not ask for handouts for what happened to their ancestors so long ago.

SEVEN: Forty-eight percent are perfectly OK with Trump’s remarks about black athletes being called SOB’s when they took a knee during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before an athletic contest.

EIGHT:  Thirty-nine percent think that the idea of having next door neighbors being Hispanics or African Americans would cause them to move out of the neighborhood due to their belief that their hard-earned property values would plummet even though the evidence says otherwise.

NINE:  Eighty-eight percent of white Americans are content when they worship on Sundays apart from any persons of color because of what they see as,” their unique style of worship and preaching.” Translated: They do not want to be talked about from the pulpit in a black church.

TEN: Almost nine out of 10 persons who were surveyed did not have any person of color as an acquaintance or a friend that they could visit or talk with at least once a week. Practically none have ever visited a black home for a meal, nor have they been to a black church or to a black theatrical play.

ELEVEN: A bare four percent of the respondents have ever read a book by a minority author and could not identify people such as John Coltrane, Toni Morrison, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Thurgood Marshall, Lionel Hampton, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, W.E.B DuBois or could name two predominately black colleges.

TWELVE: Only a fraction of one percent would want to change places with a black person and experience “black life” for ninety days as being a slave in the South or as a sharecropper in Mississippi during the 1930’s.

     Our survey results indicate that the social and cultural chasm between white and black America is not closing but ever widening.

Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com

 

 

 
   
   


Copyright © 2019 by [The Sojourner's Truth]. All rights reserved.
Revised: 08/08/19 19:31:18 -0400.


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