The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Vio - By Steven Pinker Page 0,238

Data from Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1997, originally gathered by the National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago. “Would move”: Data from Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1997, originally gathered by the Gallup Organization.

FIGURE 7–7. White attitudes to interracial marriage in the United States, 1958–2008

Sources: “Disapprove”: Data from Schuman, Steeh, & Bobo, 1997, originally gathered by the Gallup Organization. “Oppose”: Data from the General Social Survey (http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website).

Also in decline are dehumanizing and demonizing beliefs. Among white Americans, these beliefs historically took the form of the prejudice that African Americans were lazier and less intelligent than whites. But over the past two decades, the proportion of Americans professing these beliefs has been falling, and today the proportion who profess that inequality is a product of low ability is negligible (figure 7–8).

Religious intolerance has been in steady decline as well. In 1924, 91 percent of the students in a middle-American high school agreed with the statement “Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples should be converted to it.” By 1980, only 38 percent agreed. In 1996, 62 percent of Protestants and 74 percent of Catholics agreed with the statement “All religions are equally good”—an opinion that would have baffled their ancestors a generation before, to say nothing of those in the 16th century.28

The stigmatizing of any attitude that smacks of the dehumanization or demonization of minority groups extends well beyond the polling numbers. It has transformed Western culture, government, sports, and everyday life. For more than fifty years America has been cleansing itself of racist imagery that had accumulated in its popular culture. First to go were demeaning portrayals of African Americans such as blackface musical performances, shows like Amos ’n’ Andy and Little Rascals, films such as Walt Disney’s Song of the South, and many Bugs Bunny cartoons.29 Caricatures in logos, advertisements, and lawn ornaments have disappeared as well. The peak of the civil rights movement was a turning point, and the taboo was quickly extended to other ethnic groups. I remember as a child the 1964 rollout of a line of powdered drink mixes called Funny Face that came in flavors called Goofy Grape, Loud Mouth Lime, Chinese Cherry, and Injun’ Orange, each illustrated with a grotesque caricature. Bad timing. Within two years the latter two were made over into a raceless Choo Choo Cherry and Jolly Olly Orange.30 We are still living through the rebranding of venerable sports teams that were based on Native American stereotypes, most recently the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux. Derogatory racial and ethnic jokes, offensive terms for minority groups, and naïve musings about innate racial differences have become taboo in mainstream forums and have ended the careers of several politicians and media figures. Of course, plenty of vicious racism can still be found in the cesspools of the Internet and at the fringes of the political right, but a sharp line divides it from mainstream culture and politics. For instance, in 2002 the Senate Republican minority leader Trent Lott praised the 1948 presidential bid of Strom Thurmond, who at the time was an avowed segregationist. After a firestorm from within his own party, Lott was forced to resign his post.

FIGURE 7–8. Unfavorable opinions of African Americans, 1977–2006

Sources: Data from Bobo & Dawson, 2009, based on data from the General Social Survey (http://www.norc.org/GSS+Website).

The campaign to extirpate any precursor to attitudes that could lead to racial violence has defined the bounds of the thinkable and sayable. Racial preferences and set-asides are difficult to justify by rational arguments in a society that professes to judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Yet no one in a position of responsibility is willing to eliminate them, because they realize it would decrease the representation of African Americans in professional positions and risk a repolarization of society. So whenever racial preferences are declared illegal or voted out in plebiscites, they are reframed with euphemisms such as “affirmative action” and “diversity” and preserved in workarounds (such as granting university admission to the top percentage of students in every high school rather than to the top percentage statewide).

The race-consciousness continues after admissions. Many universities herd freshmen into sensitivity workshops that force them to confess to unconscious racism, and many more have speech codes (ruled unconstitutional whenever they have been challenged in court) that criminalize any opinion that may cause offense to a minority group.31 Some of the infractions for “racial harassment” cross over into self-parody, as when a student at an