Racism as a social construct - opinion you
The idea that party identification shapes perception, for example, is pretty uncontroversial. And social scientists have long known that exposure to unusual events that make news shapes our perceptions; Gallup surveys consistently show that concern with racism tends to spike after major events like the Ferguson protests, George Floyd's killing or Trump's election. But this effect has been in hyperdrive in recent years. And there's evidence to suggest that the constant beating of the racism drum has led many to see racism where they didn't previously. Mentions of racism in national news outlets have soared since And this media activity has coincided with a drop in the number of Americans who describe Black-white relations as good. From to , 70 percent of Americans believed that race relations were good, a number that dropped to half after How do I know that negative media attention to race, rather than a worsening reality, is driving perception? racism as a social construct
Newsweek April 13, RaceOther No one can dispute that America is currently undergoing a racial reckoning. Ever since the killing of George Floyd in the spring ofa nation-wide soul-searching over racism has seized hold of the collective imagination, with everyone from massive corporations to national media outlets leading the charge against America's enduring—even rising—white supremacism.
But what if everyone is wrong? What if the media and the national conversation isn't exposing racism so much as creating it, or at least, creating the impression that it is far more prevalent than we thought? The report is an analysis of a wide variety of data sources, including several new surveys that I conducted. And what I found is that media exposure, partisanship and a person's anxiety or depression levels explain much of what passes for racism today—as well as essentially all of its reported rise.
Adapted from a recent MI report.]
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