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American Morning

Americans Mixed on Affirmative Action

Aired June 26, 2001 - 09:31   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Turning from that case of racial violence to another race issue, this time affirmative action. That is the focus of a recent Gallup Poll survey. We get results now from Gallup Poll editor in chief Frank Newport. He is live in his home, Princeton, New jersey. Well, not his home, but his home workplace. Hi, Frank.

FRANK NEWPORT, EDITOR IN CHIEF, GALLUP POLL: That's right, whatever you call it...

KAGAN: It feels like home, you're there so much.

NEWPORT: That's right. I'm happy to be here, whatever it's called, and happy to be with you.

The Supreme Court yesterday let stand a Texas ruling on affirmative action which had disallowed some of the practices the law school there had taken into account, and it really raised this issue which we've seen again and again about to what extent should employers and educational institutions take positive affirmative steps in terms of racial recruiting.

Our new polls really shows there's two different worlds out there. We have whites, blacks and Hispanics, very basic question, do minorities have equal opportunities in society today, and look at the different perceptions. For whites in America today, 53 percent yes. But boy, if you're African-American, it's overwhelmingly no. And Hispanics, actually, in this question more like whites in terms of saying it's a mixed bag.

Affirmative action programs themselves get a different reaction, as we might expect, depending on your racial or ethnic background, mixed overall on in the American population. Here is whites in America. It's really mixed, 44 to 48. When just used the words affirmative action programs for minorities, you can see that it's about half and half.

Black Americans overwhelming favored them and in this question, if you're are Hispanic, you also are in favor of affirmative action. One reason that we get these mixed reactions is it really depends on how you specify it. This is very fascinating here.

We listed some several different types of affirmative programs. If it comes to training programs to make people aware of the need and avoiding discrimination, overwhelmingly people favored them. The majority of Americans favored job ads, but when you use the Q word, when you say quotas, which would allow standards to be lowered to make up for past discrimination, you can see that even black Americans don't favor that, and that's one of the reasons we get the mixed reaction overall is it depends on how you define it.

Bottom line, here, Daryn, support for affirmative action Americans-wide really depends on how you specify it.

Daryn, Kyra, back to you.

KAGAN: Frank Newport -- Frank, thank you.

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