AP-Univision Poll: Discrimination against Hispanics high
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Who’s discriminated against in America? More people say Hispanics than blacks or women — and it’s far from just Hispanics who feel that way.An Associated Press-Univision Poll found that 61% of people overall said Hispanics faced significant discrimination, compared with 52% who said blacks do and 50% who said women.
The survey also underscored how perceptions of prejudice can vary by ethnicity. Although 81% of Hispanics said the ethnic group confronted a lot or some discrimination, a smaller but still substantial 59% of non-Hispanics agreed.
It is not unusual for members of a group to feel they face more prejudice. In this survey, that was especially true when people were asked about “a lot” of discrimination. Fifty-five percent of Hispanics said the group faced ‘a lot.’ Only 24% of non-Hispanics were in agreement.
The AP-Univision Poll compiled the views of 901 Hispanics, which were compared with the results of a separate AP-GfK survey of the general population.Attention to whether Hispanics were singled out for unfair treatment intensified after last month, when Arizona enacted a law requiring local police to ascertain the citizenship of people they suspected of being in the U.S. illegally.
President Obama called the statute “misdirected” Wednesday at a joint news conference with Mexican President Felipe Calderón, and he said the Justice Department would soon complete a review of whether the law violated civil-rights laws. But others have rallied behind the statute as a needed step with an estimated 12-million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
About 40% of the Hispanics in the survey said they had experienced much discrimination personally — including 13% who said they had dealt with it a lot.
“I was discriminated against, ‘You’re just a dumb Mexican,’ ‘ said Ric J. Romero, 56, a retiree in Albuquerque, N.M., who said he traced his family’s origins to Spain, not Mexico. “Yes, there is still very heavy discrimination.”
There also were partisan differences. Fifty-five percent of Hispanic Democrats and 38% of Hispanic Republicans said there was a lot of discrimination against Hispanics, and Hispanic Democrats are more likely than those in the GOP to say they have been affected personally.Hispanics in the poll perceived discrimination against other groups a bit more often than non-Hispanics did.
Fifty-seven percent of Hispanics and 50% of non-Hispanics said blacks were discriminated against. Fifty-eight percent of Hispanics and 48% of others said they had observed discrimination against women.
The AP-Univision Poll was conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media from May 7 to 12. It involved land-line and cellphone interviews with 901 Hispanic adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 percentage points.
The findings were compared with a separate AP-GfK poll of 1,002 adults from the general population, also by GfK Roper. It involved cellphone and land-line interviews conducted from May 7 to 11 and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.3 percentage points.-- Associated Press