College Freshman Weigh in on Racism
One of the key findings from The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2004, a survey of more than 280,000 students conducted by UCLA, is that only 29.7 percent of college freshmen indicate that "helping to promote racial understanding" is an "essential" or "very important" personal goal, down from a high of 46.4 percent in 1992. And 22.7 percent of freshmen feel that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in America, up from a low of 12.5 percent in 1993. Recent declines in racial interaction patterns are also evident, with 67.8 percent of freshmen in 2004 stating that they frequently socialized with someone of a different racial or ethnic group in high school, a decline from 70 percent in 2001.
