More voters think that it’s harder to be Black in US now than in 2016: Pew

A new Pew Research Center poll found that Americans’ views on race have become more polarized since the 2016 election.

For example, in 2016, 57 percent of voters who supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that it’s “a lot more difficult” to be Black in the U.S. than it is to be white, while 11 percent of President Trump’s supporters said the same.

This gap has widened this election cycle. Nearly 75 percent of respondents who support Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden believe that it’s comparatively “a lot more difficult” to be Black than white in American, but just 9 percent of Trump supporters agreed with the statement.

Moreover, 59 percent of Biden supporters polled said that white people benefit “a great deal” from advantages in American society that aren’t afforded to Black people — white privilege — an increase of 19 points from where Clinton supporters stood in 2016.

The numbers come as other recent polls have shown that race relations in the U.S. are historically bad.

A Gallup survey from last week showed that a majority of Americans polled — 55 percent — view relations between Black and white Americans as either very or somewhat bad, a record. The poll was taken in June and July, after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis at the end of May.

Floyd’s death sparked a summer of nationwide protests and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. The movement and the issues that it has attempted to highlight, such as police brutality and systemic racism, have become politicized, likely further driving the wedge between voters.

Pew’s poll was conducted July 27-Aug. 2, before Kenosha, Wis., police in late August shot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, seven times in the back at close range.

The research center surveyed 11,001 U.S. adults, including 9,114 who are registered voters.