Karlyn Bowman Archives - The Pursuit of Happiness

Proud to Be an American This Independence Day?

June 30, 2017

Are America’s best days ahead? It’s a time-tested question asked for decades to gauge the nation’s mood, and the answers give clues on whether people are proud to be an American or whether they are “over” America’s grand experiment. Fortunately, the fundamental belief in the greatness of the nation is still strong.

As Independence Day 2017 approaches, Americans are feeling pretty good about the nation’s form if less so about its function.

According to a new report that looked at a series of polling questions repeatedly administered over many years, the American spirit is still trending strong. As recently as March, 75 percent of Americans told the Gallup polling company that they are “very” or “extremely” proud to be an American. Unfortunately, this number is down six points from the previous two years.

But other poll questions that looked at particular aspects of America showed good will toward the nation’s ideals and achievements. For instance, 84 percent told Gallup they are proud to live under the U.S. system of government. More than half of Americans in an AP/NORC poll said they are extremely or very proud of America’s Armed Forces, as well as achievements in science, technology, sports, history, arts, and literature.

As for the nation’s best days, 62 percent of registered voters told Fox News in May that America’s best days are ahead; 29 percent said they were behind us. That’s an increase from recession-era May 2009 when 57 percent thought our best days were ahead and 33 said they were behind, but slightly down from mid-2012.

As far as exceptionalism – the very profound idea that America is unlike any other nation because of its emphasis on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — 81 percent told Gallup in 2016 that America is exceptional, and holds a responsibility to be a leader in the world.

But as Karlyn Bowman and Eleanor O’Neil, researchers on public opinion and its impact on U.S. policy, write, just because people are proud of their country doesn’t mean they are happy with how it’s being run.

Pollsters tend to focus on our problems, and they are real, of course. When you care deeply about your country, you want to shine a light on problems to fix them. …

It will come as no surprise to anyone that we are dissatisfied with performance these days. In recent months, in a question Gallup has asked since the 1930s about the most important problem facing the country, more people volunteered “poor leadership/dissatisfaction with government” (25 percent of respondents) than mentioned any other problem. In a 2017 AP/NORC survey, 53 percent said political polarization was extremely or very threatening to the American way of life. It ranked higher than all of the other things asked about including the nation’s political leaders, illegal immigration, economic inequality, the influence from foreign governments, and legal immigration.

Likewise, the notion of division is palpable, with 86 percent saying they believe America “is more politically divided than in the past, the highest response on this question that was first asked in 2004. Around six in ten feel Donald Trump is doing more to divide the country than unite it.”

So, if a majority of Americans feel divided and are not confident in the way the government is being run but they are still optimistic about whether problems can be fixed, can common ground can be found? How do we go back to functioning cohesively? Could it be a grand project like putting a man on the moon? Does change start with us? The big ideas are noteworthy topics to remember and celebrate on America’s birthday.

Happy Independence Day!

What’s your idea for bringing together those who are proud to be an American to getting them to work together to solve the country’s biggest challenges? Leave a comment or join the conversation on Facebook.

Loving v. Virginia: Has America Finally Caught On to ‘Land of the Free’?

January 14, 2017

“Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society,” President Obama said in his farewell speech a week before leaving office. Undeniably, race relations appear to have taken a turn for the worse in the last eight years, but no matter the cause, Americans have come a long way toward accepting interracial relationships.

That’s a reason to celebrate, particularly as a new movie marks the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the case of Loving v. Virginia. In it, the court ruled that it’s a violation of the Constitution to prohibit matrimonial “race-mixing.” The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison for marrying.

That was 50 years ago, a short time considering many young Americans today would likely find it hard to believe that anti-miscegenation laws were ever on the books, much less had to be thrown out by a ruling of the highest court in the land.

And it really wasn’t that long ago when you consider how much American viewpoints have changed since that time.

Political scientist Karlyn Bowman explains:

Although opinion, including those of whites, moved to agreement with the court’s ruling to eliminate discriminatory laws, actual support for the idea of interracial marriage lagged. Three-quarters of whites in 1968 and almost as many Americans overall (73 percent) disapproved of the idea of marriages between blacks and whites. The last time Gallup asked the question in 2013, 11 percent nationally gave that response. In the polls, blacks have always been more supportive than whites of interracial marriage, but the responses of both groups have moved in a more supportive direction in tandem. In Gallup’s 2013 survey, 96 percent of blacks and 84 percent of whites approved of interracial marriage. …

Opinions about interracial dating and marriage on a personal level have also evolved significantly. In 1971, 48 percent nationally said they would not approve of their own children dating someone of another race, while 28 percent said they would approve. In 2014, nearly eight in 10 Americans said it wouldn’t matter at all if someone in their family was going to marry someone of another race. Nine percent said they would be happy about it, while 11 percent said they would be unhappy. Today, a majority of whites (54 percent) say they would neither favor nor oppose a close relative marrying a black person. Blacks are slightly less ambivalent, with 42 percent of them giving that response about a close relative marrying a white person. Fifty-two percent favor the idea compared to 30 percent of whites.

Bowman notes that race relations as a whole appear not to have improved under Obama — a Pew Research Center poll released in the fall found that “only 9 percent thought race relations had gotten better since Obama came into office. Sixty-seven percent thought they had gotten worse.”

That may just be a historical blip caused by a divisive political climate rather than widely held views of entire groups of people.

But if you still have a problem with interracial marriage, you may want to get over your prejudice and stop living in the past — especially since it’s more commonplace than ever. The 2013 American Community Survey found that 6.3 percent of all marriages that year were between people of different races. That’s compared to less than 1 percent in 1970.

Read Bowman’s report on changes in attitudes about interracial marriage.