White Americans and black Americans are deeply divided on the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial and the racial issues surrounding it, according to a new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center.
While 39 percent of Americans are satisfied with the verdict, 42 percent are dissatisfied with the verdict and 19 percent offered no opinion. The numbers are sharply divided along racial lines.
Only five percent of blacks are satisfied with the verdict, but 86 percent are dissatisfied. By contrast, 49 percent of whites are satisfied, while only 30 percent are dissatisfied.
Blacks and whites also strongly disagree on the racial aspects of the case.
52 percent of Americans think race is garnering more attention in the case than it deserves, while only 36 percent say that the case raises important racial issues for a necessary national discussion. But again, opinion on this issue is strongly delineated by race.
A total of 78 percent of blacks think the case raises important racial issues that need to be discussed, while only 13 percent think race is getting too much attention in the case. By contrast, only 28 percent of whites think the case raises important racial issues, while a staggering 60 percent of whites think that race is garnering too much attention.
But whites and blacks at least agree on the fact that they’re having trouble agreeing.
These new figures came out the same week that an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that white satisfaction in race relations has dropped 27 percent and white dissatisfaction has increased by 25 percent during Obama’s presidency. Black satisfaction in race relations has dropped 25 percent and dissatisfaction has increased by 28 percent during the same period.
Obama garnered intense criticism in March 2012 for weighing in on the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, announcing, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Obama went a step further in July 2013, after the acquittal of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in Martin’s death, declaring, “Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
As The Daily Caller reported, the Obama administration’s Justice Department sent a unit with a history of anti-white racial advocacy to Sanford, Florida to help facilitate protests in the area calling for Zimmerman’s prosecution in 2012, including a major rally headlined by activist Al Sharpton. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which steadfastly supports the Obama administration, distributed pro-Obama election flyers in 2012 with lynching and Ku Klux Klan imagery.
The black unemployment rate in the United States is currently 13.7 percent, more than six points higher than the national unemployment rate, which stands at 7.6 percent.