Is Racism on The Rise?

Found this article on edition.cnn.com and thought I should share with you guys....

Debra Aust sees it in videos of recent police shootings,Alex Sproul reads about it in his Facebook feed,Sheryl Sims senses it when she walks down the street.

They are three Americans from three different demographic groups living in three different states. And they believe the same thing: Racism is a big problem.

Their voices are just a few in a country of more than 322 million people. But they are far from alone.

In a new nationwide poll conducted by CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation, roughly half of Americans -- 49% -- say racism is "a big problem" in society today. 

The figure marks a significant shift from four years ago, when over a quarter described racism that way. The percentage is also higher now than it was two decades ago. In 1995, on the heels of the O.J. Simpson trial and just a few years after the Rodney King case surged into the spotlight, 41% of Americans described racism as "a big problem."

Is racism on the rise in the United States? Has our awareness changed? Or is it a problem that's been blown out of proportion?

There's not a one-size-fits-all explanation for the shift. The survey of 1,951 Americans across the country, which CNN will release and discuss in detail Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET, paints a complicated portrait, highlighting some similarities across racial lines and also exposing gaps that seem to be growing.

But this much is clear: Across the board, in every demographic group surveyed, there are increasing percentages of people who say racism is a big problem -- and majorities say that racial tensions are on the rise.

 'A Different Story'

It caught Debra Aust by surprise.

The 48-year-old white woman from Sterling Heights, Michigan, says she didn't expect racism to get worse.

"It always seemed like it was getting better, like our generation was going to be better than previous generations," says Aust, who participated in the CNN/KFF poll. "But the TV started telling us a different story, with all of these shootings by cops."

For Aust, whose father and uncle both work in law enforcement, the news stories she's seen about unarmed African-American men being shot by police have hit home. The officers should be held accountable, she says.

"What's not helping is the police are getting off with a slap on the wrist. ... If it was me, and I was black, and this was happening in my community, I would be furious," she says.

The case of Walter Scott, who was shot in April by an officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, sticks out in her mind. The trial hasn't started yet. The officer's attorney says he plans to plead not guilty, and that race has nothing to do with the case. But Aust has already made up her mind.

"I mean, give me a break, he wouldn't have done that if the man was white, and that's the problem," she says.

It's gotten worse, not better, since the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, says Ellis Onic. The 56-year-old engineer in Balch Springs, Texas, who's African-American, points to the 2012 shooting death of Trayvon Martin and this year's Charleston church massacre as examples. Time and time again, Onic says, the justice system has failed.

"The white man has had his way for so long, they don't think of it as racism. They think that's just the way it is. ... We have a long way to go, because the justice system is not right. Justice is corrupt," he says. "That's why she has the blindfold over her eyes and the scale slightly tilted, so you know that it can go either way."

Jim Bruemmer sees things differently.

The white, 83-year-old retired advertising executive in St. Louis, who participated in the CNN/KFF poll, says media coverage alleging racism -- particularly when it comes to law enforcement officers -- has been overblown.

"I am troubled by the bias I see in the media, that seems to spend all its time talking about the bad policemen and the bad white people and ignoring the crime and the disastrous conditions that are occurring in large segments of the black youth," he says.

Bruemmer says he's had to look no further than a suburb of St. Louis to see that firsthand.

"The belief is so universally held among the people I know, that the whole Ferguson thing was a farce," he says, "that 'hands up, don't shoot' was baloney, that the police officer behaved in a very proper manner and saved his own life, possibly."

Growing racism?

Gauging changes in racial attitudes is complicated, says Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a professor of sociology at Duke University. Bonilla-Silva has a phrase he uses to describe the situation he sees today: "new racism."

"After the 1960s and early 1970s, somehow we developed the mythology that systemic racism disappeared," he says.

Racism remained, according to Bonilla-Silva, but became more covert.

"The main problem nowadays is not the folks with the hoods, but the folks dressed in suits," he says.

"New racism," he says, has been decades in the making. But something has changed in recent years -- access to cell phones and social media.

Accusations that police use excessive force, particularly against African-Americans, for example, now can get far more attention -- far more quickly -- than ever.

Communities of color across the country can more easily connect, according to Bonilla-Silva, and people are picking up on patterns that scholars have long discussed.

"People are doing Sociology 101. They can connect Walter Scott, the assassinations of black folks in a church, the slamming of a girl in a school," he says. "And then it's across the nation. People are then connecting the dots and saying, 'No more.'"

Growing awareness?

While the trend of a growing percentage of people viewing racism as a big problem in recent years was true across racial lines in the CNN/KFF poll, the share who see it as a problem is notably higher among blacks and Hispanics.

About two-thirds of blacks (66%) and Hispanics (64%) said racism is a big problem, while just over four in 10 (43%) whites said the same. Hispanics are much more likely now to say racism is a big problem than they were in 1995, when less than half responded that way. Among blacks, the share who said racism was a big problem dropped from 68% in 1995 to 50% in 2011, and now has climbed back to 66%.

Majorities across races said tensions between racial and ethnic groups in the United States have increased in the past 10 years. Roughly a quarter said tensions have stayed the same.

Sometimes the way people view racism can play out like a referee's call in a baseball game, says Glenn Adams, a professor of psychology at the University of Kansas who has studied perceptions of racism.

"Is the guy out or safe? Well, it depends who you're rooting for," he says. "Sometimes it's clear in either direction, but we tend to see it how we want to see it."

It's likely the level of racism in the United States is more or less the same, Adams says.

"What's changed," he says, "is that more people are aware of it."

Source:edition.cnn.com