In the same Economist /YouGov poll:
15% of American Hispanics agree with those racist Trump supporters: The Emancipation Proclamation was a bad idea. A quarter of Hispanics are not sure.
32% of American blacks back President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to round up Japanese-Americans and put them in camps during World War II. According to The New York Times analysis of the poll results, that is almost exactly the same percentage as among Trump voters.
More than 30% of those UNDER 30 are not sure that President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order desegregating the U.S. military was a good idea. 15% are sure it wasn’t. (Incidentally, those who were around back then, the 65 and up crowd, are significantly more likely applaud Truman’s desegregation order than kids today.)
43% of likely Democratic primary voters, a very liberal slice of America, approve of President George W. Bush’s pro-torture executive order after 9/11.
So, are America’s Hispanics nearly as racist as Trump supporters? Do a third of African-Americans have it in for their Asian countrymen? Are kids raised in the 1980s and later more resistant to desegregation than Americans born when Jim Crow was a thing? Do liberals love waterboarding?
Uh, no.
Here’s something that might put things in perspective: If you dig deep into the confusing Economist/YouGov online poll, you find that only 71% of American blacks approve of the Emancipation Proclamation. Five percent definitely disapprove of Lincoln’s action and 24% just aren’t sure.
It’s as if America’s educational system — and its pollsters and media — are run by people who just don’t do a very good job.