In a recent AP survey, an implicit test for racial attitudes, it was found that anti-black sentiment has increased from 49% to 57% since 2008. The racial attitudes test was conducted by the the University of Michigan, Stanford University, the University of Chicago.

In the survey, explicit anti-black sentiment increased from 48% to 51%. The difference between the explicit and implicit numbers is due to how the implicit questions are formed. Those questions are designed to expose attitudes normally hidden or repressed in an individual. There is a lot of thought and validation put into surveys that try to gain information about attitudes that may be below conscious thought.

In an analysis of the survey a number of political conclusions came to light:

• Anti‐Black attitudes became slightly more common between 2008 and 2012.
• Sizable proportions of both Democrats and Republicans manifested anti‐
Black attitudes, though anti‐Black attitudes were more common among Republicans than among Democrats.
• People who identified themselves as Republicans in 2012 expressed anti‐
Black attitudes more often than did Republican identifiers in 2008.
• People with more negative attitudes toward Blacks were less likely to
approve of President Obama’s job performance.
• The influence of racial attitudes on approval of Mr. Obama’s job performance decreased between 2010 and 2012.
• If anti‐Black attitudes had been converted to be neutral, about 2 to 3
percentage points more people would have approved of President Obama’s
job performance in 2010 and 2012.
• If both anti‐Black and pro‐Black attitudes had been converted to be neutral, the proportion of Americans disapproving of President Obama’s job
performance would have been 1 to 3 percentage points lower in both 2010
and 2012.
• In 2012, holding negative attitudes toward Blacks increased the likelihoods of voting for Mr. Romney and not voting at all and decreased the likelihood of voting for Mr. Obama.
• Neutralizing anti‐Black attitudes led to a projected increase in Mr. Obama’s 2012 vote share of 4 percentage points and a projected decrease in Mr. Romney’s 2012 vote share of 5 percentage points.
• Converting both anti‐Black and pro‐Black attitudes to neutral led to a
projected increase in Mr. Obama’s 2012 vote share of 2 percentage points
and a projected decrease in Mr. Romney’s 2012 vote share of 3 percentage
points.

A safe conclusion to come to would be that racism seems to have increased most in the Republican world. The explicit anti-black attitudes are 79% for Republicans, and 32% for Democrats. The implicit numbers are much closer with 64% for Republican and 55% for Democrats. The difference in these numbers reflect the new openness to expressing racism against blacks that we see in the comments from right wing blogs. Sadly, the work done over the past 50 years to denormalize racist attitudes is taking a beating.

A special hats off to theCommodore who also put up a post on this.