Ted, that survey is not only stupid, it's designed as a "gotcha" on the American public's attitude toward race relations.
Take this part, for instance:
The explicit racism measures asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements about black and Hispanic people. In addition, the surveys asked how well respondents thought certain words, such as "friendly," ''hardworking," ''violent" and "lazy," described blacks, whites and Hispanics. Those are leading questions! First of all, respondents are asked to judge an ENTIRE RACIAL GROUP according to each given characteristic. That makes the survey itself inherently racist.
Second, how the hell did the researchers who designed the survey judge which responses were "racist" or "prejudiced"? We can find out by reading the actual research paper:
comm.stanford.edu
Here's an example:
Explicit racial attitudes were gauged using questions designed to measure “Symbolic Racism” (Henry & Sears, 2002). The questions, averaged into a single index, were: “Irish, Italians, Jewish1, and other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without special favors.” Really? A question like that will measure what the researchers call "symbolic racism"? That's a crock, and I suspect the researchers and their cohorts in the AP know it.
Tenchusatsu |
