Support of Integration and Equality
According to Bobo, the slow progression from Jim Crow to laissez-faire racism can be measured in the trends for questions on racial principles. These polls can help to provide the most descriptive evidence in the changes in racial sentiment in the United States. Surveys and polls conducted in 1942 show a continuing increase among whites who support racial integration and equal rights. In 1942, 68 percent of white Americans approved of school segregation, while only 7 percent approved this same position in 1985. Additionally, 55 percent of whites surveyed in 1944 thought whites should receive preference over blacks in access to jobs, compared with only 3 percent of whites in 1972. These same progressive attitudes in whites were extended to areas of interracial marriage, equal housing rights, and access to political office—although racial ideals tended to vary greatly amongst whites depending on geographical location, educational levels, age, and other factors.
Read more about this topic: Laissez-faire Racism
Famous quotes containing the words support of, support, integration and/or equality:
“An ordinary man will work every day for a year at shoveling dirt to support his body, or a family of bodies; but he is an extraordinary man who will work a whole day in a year for the support of his soul. Even the priests, men of God, so called, for the most part confess that they work for the support of the body.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“War ... should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“The more specific idea of evolution now reached is—a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.”
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
“I do not think white America is committed to granting equality to the American Negro ... this is a passionately racist country; it will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)