Jaw-Dropping Number of White Republicans Say We’ve Done Enough to Ensure Equal Rights for Black Americans in New Poll

KEREM YUCEL/AFP/Getty Images

A jaw-dropping majority of White Republicans say the country has done enough to ensure that Black Americans are treated equally.

In an extensive Axios-Ipsos poll timed for the one-year anniversary of the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, respondents were asked to choose between two statements: “Our country needs to continue making changes to give Black Americans equal rights with white Americans,” and “Our country has made the changes needed to give Black Americans equal rights with white Americans.”

Overall, 59 percent said that the country needs to continue making changes, versus 39 percent who said we’ve done enough. There were significant racial divides on the question, with 48 percent of whites saying we’ve done enough — still a minority — while 92 percent of Black respondents said the country needs to continue changing.

But an even more stark partisan racial divide exists, with a whopping 79 percent of white Republicans saying America has done enough to ensure equality, versus only 12 percent of white Democrats who said the same.

Respondents were also asked if they agree with the statement “America is not a racist country,” and white Republicans were twelve times more likely than white Democrats to agree. In fact, more than twice as many Black respondents — 9 percent — agreed that America is not a racist country than the 4 percent of white Democrats who said this.

And 60 percent of white Democrats agreed that “The protests in 2020 over racial injustice had a positive impact on society” — many times more than the 8 percent of white Republicans who agreed and more than the 52 percent of Black respondents who did.

Axios summed up the poll this way:

A new Axios-Ipsos poll on race relations one year after George Floyd’s murder shows in stunning detail how there’s no such thing as “what white Americans think,” with Republicans and Democrats seemingly living in two different worlds.

Why it matters: Such a vast gap between the left and right inside the majority U.S. racial group belies the notion of a compromise view, and it shows why Congress has been so slow to act.

• It also helps to explain why Donald Trump still has such a hold on the GOP.

The result isn’t exactly surprising, but the sheer enormity of the disparity between the views of white Republicans and other Americans is glaring nonetheless. For a little bit of perspective, that 79 percent who say we’ve done enough to ensure equality for Black people is eleven points higher than the 68 percent of Republicans who said Trump should run for president again in 2024 in another recent poll.