Analytics and advisory company Gallup, best known for its polling, recently launched its Center for Black Voices with the goal of having an ongoing study of Black life.
Officials from the company say they want to get a better snapshot of the 40 million African Americans living in the nation. The information will be used to inform leaders in making evidence-based decisions. Gallup aims to do this through establishing, tracking and reporting on newly created sustainable development goals within the Black community.
The Gallup Center’s first poll question on race took place in 1939. The question was about then-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigning from the Daughters of American Revolution over their decision to not allow Black opera singer Marian Anderson inside the organization’s concert hall. Nearly 60% of those polled at the time approved of Roosevelt’s action.
“We’re making a 100-year commitment to report on the Black experience in America,” said Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup. “We’re going to listen for 100 years, gathering stories and perspectives from Black Americans that can help bring about meaningful change in our society.”
Topics of opinion polls range from justice, health, economics, jobs, education and community. One of the Center’s recent polls was about police reform. The survey reveals that 58% of Americans say policing needs major changes while nearly 90% of Black Americans believe major changes are needed.
In an interview with the AmNews, the Center’s director and a senior consultant Camille Lloyd said Gallup is taking a new approach when it comes to surveying the Black community.
“We understand the Black experience is not monolithic,” she said. “There are a number of different nuanced experiences based on gender, age, region and a number of different intersectionalities. This is our commitment to understanding and unpacking that experience. Not just for the sake of research, but understanding the impact that systemic oppression and exclusion has had on African Americans.”
This month the Center released the results from a survey on Black adults and microaggressive experiences. The survey revealed that 32% of Black adults say people have acted as if they were better than them and a quarter said people have acted as if they weren’t smart. Black men are more than twice as likely as Black women to say people have acted as if they were afraid of them.
“One of the major limitations and challenges in doing research is the limitation around sample sizes and the ability to drill down those nuance experiences,” Lloyd said. “It’s different than doing national studies that you’re probably only able to break out, maybe sometimes minority verses non-minority. What we’re doing that’s different now is the commitment of doing sufficient enough surveys and/or interviews to allow us to be able to get at those nuances.”
While polls are often criticized by the public and government sometimes for being inaccurate and their selection of participants, Lloyd said Gallup is doing a self-examination on how to address the limitations that exist in how research is traditionally conducted in the Black community.
“It’s both looking at the approach that we take in terms of methodology but also looking at a critical eye to say, ‘What’s the question,’ ‘What’s the research topic at hand’ and ‘What’s the best approach to get at those nuances?’ Those are things we are examining within the Center and as an organization to make sure that when we are choosing a topic to study, we are interrogating our practices to ensure we don’t continue to lean into those limitations.”