It’s a small sample size, but new research appears to indicate that anti-anti-racism is now the default view of white Americans who see themselves as a persecuted, put-upon minority that happens to hold over 90 percent of political offices, corporate executive jobs, and other positions of power and prestige:
Black Americans saw anti-black bias as declining steadily, from 9.7 in the ’50s to 6.1 in the ’00s. Over the same period, they perceived a small increase in anti-white bias, from 1.4 to 1.8.
White Americans saw an even steeper decline in anti-black bias: from 9.1, in the ’50s, to 3.6, in the ’00s. But more striking, according to the researchers, was the sharp increase in perceived anti-white bias: Among whites, it shot up from 1.8 to 4.7.
White Americans, in short, thought that anti-white bias was a greater societal problem by the ’00s than anti-black bias.
I was actually thinking the other day about NOFX’s “Don’t Call Me White” and what an immature perspective that reflected. Nonetheless, I didn’t feel too bad about having liked that song when it was released on the grounds that I was 13 at the time and thus entitled to an immature perspective. And yet here we are.
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