Less than half of Americans believe racial minorities face substantial discrimination, in a reversal of the previous trend.<\/p>\n
Only 40 percent of people in the United States believe that Black and Hispanic people face \u201cquite a bit\u201d or \u201ca great deal\u201d of discrimination, according to a new poll highlighting a reversal in previously held perceptions.<\/p>\n
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released on Thursday also found that 30 percent of those surveyed felt the same way about Asian people, and only 10 percent believed that white people were discriminated against.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number of people saying Asian people and Black people are experiencing a substantial amount of discrimination has dropped since an AP-NORC poll conducted in April 2021,\u201d according to a statement on the NORC website.<\/p>\n
The poll comes as US President Donald Trump<\/a> continues to attack initiatives that promote diversity at universities and the workplace, and to pressure institutions not aligned with his political agenda in the name of combatting left-wing ideas.<\/p>\n In the spring of 2021, amid massive protests against racial injustice following the police killing of George Floyd<\/a> in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 60 percent of people polled believed that Black people face \u201ca great deal\u201d or \u201cquite a bit\u201d of discrimination in the US. That figure has now dropped to less than 50 percent.<\/p>\n About 74 percent of Black people say their communities continue to face substantial discrimination, while just 39 percent of white respondents said that Black people face serious discrimination.<\/p>\n People in the US have also become more sceptical about corporate efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion<\/a>, often referred to as DEI. Many large companies have started to roll back<\/a> such efforts.<\/p>\n Between 33 percent and 41 percent said that DEI made no difference at all, and a quarter said it was likely to increase discrimination against minorities.<\/p>\n \u201cAnytime they\u2019re in a space that they\u2019re not expected to be, like seeing a Black girl in an engineering course \u2026 they are seen as only getting there because of those factors,\u201d Claudine Brider, a 48-year-old Black Democrat in Compton, California, told the Associated Press. \u201cIt\u2019s all negated by someone saying, \u2018You\u2019re only here to meet a quota.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But the Trump administration has gone far beyond criticisms of DEI efforts, wielding a wide definition of the term to exert pressure<\/a> on institutions and organisations that he sees as hostile to his political agenda. The president has threatened, for example, to withhold federal disaster aid from states that do not align with his efforts to roll back anti-discrimination measures and open probes into companies with DEI policies, which he has framed as racist against white people.<\/p>\n