A Nation Changes Its Mind about Black Lives Matter

A few years ago, over what I expected to be a completely pleasant dinner with a friend I hadn’t seen in quite some time, he asked what I thought of Black Lives Matter. Then he told me what he thought, in a torrent of anger and hostility.  It was unnerving. But it was his position, not mine, that was normative at the time.  I don’t know if he has changed his mind. But the nation has. In the two weeks following the May 25th death of George Floyd, support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) soared. The movement now has majority support. When the percentage who do not support it is subtracted from the percentage who do, the difference is 28%. Before May 25, it took nearly two years for support for BLM to improve as much as it has in just two weeks afterwards.  In Nearly Every Demographic Group, More Americans Approve than Disapprove of BLM Drawing from the findings from Civiqs, an online survey research firm, Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy reported the net support (percentage approving minus percentage disapproving) for 14 subgroups: four race categories (White, Black, Hispanic or Latino, and Other), three political parties (Democrats, Republicans, and Independents), three educational categories (non-college grads, college grads, and postgraduates), and four age groups (18 to 34, 35 to 49, 50 to 64, and 65 and older).  At the end of the two-week period, net support for BLM was positive for 13 of the 14 groups. In the race category, the net approval was greatest for Blacks (+82), but...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Policy and Advocacy Racism Black Lives Matter Police brutality Prejudice Source Type: blogs