Most Black Americans think more police reforms are needed to ensure racial equality, but most are not confident it is not going to happen anytime soon, a recent poll shows.
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows 70 percent of Black adults want more progress in racial equality in policing. Out of those who said more changes were needed, 49 percent are pessimistic the change will happen in the next few years.
“There’s more attention around certain issues and there’s a realization — more people are waking up to a lot of corruption in the system,” Derek Sims, a Black 35-year-old bus driver in Austin, Texas, told The Associated Press.https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.505.0_debug_en.html#goog_13579464190 seconds of 30 secondsVolume 0%
NORC Center surveyed a diverse group of 1,289 adults nationwide from Feb. 18-21. It found that despite the global protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd, few Americans believe there has been a recognizable change over the past 50 years in the treatment of Black people by police and the criminal justice system.
Overall, 38 percent of Americans say they don’t expect to see progress in the criminal justice system in the next few years, 33 percent are optimistic, and others said they had no opinion.
Sims said he considers himself more optimistic than pessimistic that change will happen, but he is concerned the country is too divided.
“People don’t really want to come together and hash out ideas,” Sims said. “There’s just too much tribalism.”
A similar poll conducted by NORC Center in June 2020 amid the uproar over Floyd’s death shows that more than two-thirds of Americans said that the criminal justice system needed either major changes or a complete overhaul.
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