For immediate release (April 06, 2004)
Contact: Muriel Cooper at 202-434-2560 or mcooper@aarp.org

AARP The Magazine and LCCR Release Landmark Race Relations Survey Marking 50th Anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education
Among key findings: Majority of whites, blacks and Hispanics support affirmative action and 73% of Americans approve of interracial marriage

Washington, DC (April 6, 2004) – On behalf of AARP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), Gallup conducted its largest and most comprehensive race-relations survey of blacks, Hispanic and whites to date and discovered among other key findings that over half of each group supports affirmative action for blacks and Hispanics and a majority of Americans approve of interracial marriage. The survey, entitled “Civil Rights and Race Relations”, marks this year’s 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education—the Supreme Court decision that jumpstarted the American Civil Rights Movement—and appears in the May-June issue of AARP The Magazine – www.aarpmagazine.org

The AARP/LCCR Gallup survey found astounding progress in two areas that hit close to home for most Americans: interracial relationships and the neighborhoods we live in. Eighty-six percent of blacks, 79% of Hispanics and 66% of whites said they would not object to a child or grandchild marrying someone of another race.

Further buttressing the idea that different races are increasingly comfortable living together was the finding that a majority of Americans prefer to live in mixed neighborhoods. Seventy-eight percent of blacks, 61% of Hispanics and 57% of whites supported this notion. There was also widespread support for affirmative action, with the majority of Americans voicing their support for programs for blacks (57%) and Hispanics (57%).

But there were vast gulfs between different groups’ perceptions of how minorities are treated today. Seventy-six percent of white respondents thought that blacks are treated very or somewhat fairly, while only 38% of blacks agreed with them. And while 61% of whites believed that blacks have achieved the same job opportunities as whites, just 12% of African-Americans concurred.

“The major finding in this survey is that individually, most people have come to accept, and even celebrate the multiculturalism in this country,” said AARP The Magazine editor Steve Slon. “But when you start addressing some of the major societal issues of the Civil Rights Movement like fairness in front of the law and access to educational and professional opportunities, there are still gaps to be bridged. Whites tend to think that fairness has essentially been achieved, while most minorities still think it is very much a work in progress.”

“This poll underscores the progress we have made as a society as well as the critical need to do much more to improve race relations,” said Wade Henderson, Executive Director of LCCR. “The fact that a majority of each one of the groups supports affirmative action is extremely important and conveys a strong commitment to equality in the workplace and beyond. As Americans we must all work harder to advance the cause of civil rights and leave our children and future generations with institutions that promote equality for all.

The mixed results of this survey were reflected in questions that explored the future of American race relations. Sixty-three percent of respondents thought that “race relations will always be a problem in the U.S.” However, when asked to consider the prediction that by 2050 the majority of Americans would be nonwhite, only about 13% of each group said this would be a bad thing; most Americans said it simply won’t matter.

“Civil Rights and Race Relations,” a study commissioned by AARP and the LCCR and conducted by the Gallup Organization, is based on telephone interviews with 2,002 people 18 years of age or older from households in the continental United States. All polling was conducted between November 11 and December 14, 2003. The respondents included 915 whites and oversamples of 446 blacks and 551 Hispanics. In addition, 90 who belonged to other groups or gave no racial or ethnic affiliation were interviewed. The results were weighted to reflect the actual representation of each group in the U.S. population. (“Whites” refers to non-Hispanic whites; “blacks” refers to non-Hispanic blacks; and the “Hispanic” category includes all Hispanics, whether they identified as black or as white or did not specify a racial category.) The margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level for the total national sample is +/-5.1 percentage points, +/- 6.7 percentage points for whites, +/- 8.5 percentage points for blacks, and +/- 6.2 percentage points for Hispanics.

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