Rob Horowitz: Support for Black Lives Matter Markedly Increases

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Rob Horowitz, MINDSETTER™

 

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PHOTO: GoLocal's Richard McCaffrey

In the wake of the cold-blooded killing of George Floyd, an African American man, by a white police officer, while 3 other police officers looked on, and the protests the incident triggered, support for the Black Lives Matter movement has substantially increased, according to a number of recent polls. Two-out-of-three Americans now support the Black Lives Matter movement-- a 12 percentage point uptick from 2017, reports Pew Research.

Similarly, nearly 6-in-10 Americans now say “that police officers facing a difficult or dangerous situation are more likely to use excessive force if the culprit is black," while only about 1-in 3 expressed this view 5 years ago, according to the Monmouth University Poll.

Along the same lines, nearly 3-in-4 Americans now believe “racial and ethnic discrimination is a big problem” -- about a 25 percentage point increase from 5 years ago, according to the Monmouth University Poll. The George Floyd incident and related protests have also sparked more conversations about race. Pew Research finds that sixty-nine percent of American adults say they have “talked to family and friends about race and racial equality” in the last month and “37% of those who use social networking sites say they have posted or shared content related to race or racial equality on these sites during this period.”

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Not surprisingly, given the marked increase in support for Black Lives Matter and concern about racial discrimination, President Trump receives poor marks in this area. Six-in-ten Americans say the president has “delivered the wrong message to the country” in his response to the protests. On race relations generally, “about half (48%) say he has made race relations worse; 19% say he has made progress toward improving race relations, 19% say he has tried but failed to make progress and 12% say the president hasn’t addressed the issue,” according to Pew.

Over-all support for the Black Lives Matter movement, however, does not translate to specific support for ‘defunding the police.” Nearly 2-in-3 Americans oppose calls for defunding police departments, according to an ABC News/Ipsos Poll.  Nor does the softer and more nuanced explanation for the provocative slogan given by many advocates do much to increase support for the concept. Six-in-ten Americans “oppose reducing the budget for police to reallocate it to other public health and social programs.”

On the other hand, reforming police department practices to limit the use of excessive force and combat racial discrimination is overwhelmingly popular. For example, more than 8-in-10 Americans support banning racial profiling and chokeholds; more than 9-in-10 support the mandatory wearing of body cameras, according to a Reuters/Ipsos Poll.

 The advent of widely distributed video in the case of George Floyd and too many others has driven home to the American people that there is still much more to do before the promise of equal treatment and equal justice under the law is realized. The fertile political soil created by this realization is for comprehensive reform of police departments. To borrow a phrase, “for mending it, not ending it”. That is the hard work that lies ahead, both at the national level and in cities and towns throughout our nation. 


{image_2}Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.
 

 

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