As progressive causes dominate the media, a poll found huge overestimates of the number of black, gay and trans people
American ignorance is always an easy target. But my compatriots’ misconceptions about the US illustrated by a recent YouGov poll aren’t merely comical. They’re telling.
On average, the respondents estimate that 41 per cent of their countrymen are black, when the real figure is 12 per cent. More astonishingly, black Americans believe that 52 per cent of the country is also black. Respondents think America’s population is 29 per cent Asian (true: 6 per cent), 39 per cent Hispanic (true: 17 per cent), and 27 per cent Native American (true: 1 per cent). Those guesstimates add up to an arithmetically impossible 136 per cent (but then, no one ever loses money betting on the lousiness of Americans’ mathematical skills) — and that includes zero white people. The headline on this survey might have read: “Americans believe whites in the US have been subject to total genocide and don’t seem especially bothered”.
