For the times, they are a-changin' (yay!)

Sometimes, opinions around an issue change only a little bit (if at all) over a long period of time. Then again, certain factors come together to cause a rapid shift in attitudes about a subject.

A great example of the latter is attitudes Americans have held toward gays in general, and toward same-sex marriage in particular. The changes in both both were rapid and profound. In 2004, 60% of Americans were opposed to same-sex marriage. Fifteen years later, 60% were in favor!

A similar change was taking place in the 90s, when the vast majority of Americans held generally unfavorable views about homosexuality. But as more gay people came out of the closet, and more and more Americans realized that they knew someone who was gay, a similar flip-flop in polling numbers was recorded: what had been widespread antipathy morphed quickly into a generalized tolerance, if not outright acceptance.

A similar seismic shift, not around sexuality, but about race is now underway, but this time, we’re only looking at attitudes among 1400 registered voters in Texas.

The Texas Politics Project at UT/Austin has been surveying folks about their attitudes toward Black Lives Matter. This table says it all.

	Unfavorable %	Favorable %
Nov., 2016	55	28
Jun., 2020	43	42

Attitudes among Texans toward the Black Lives Matter movement

In four years the gap between favorable and unfavorable perspectives shrank, from 27% to just 1%.

I don't know about you, but for someone like me who has lived for the better part of the last three years in Austin, I'm blown away. And the fact that change about attitudes toward race can happen that fast in a place like Texas - a state whose biggest city, capital, and the county where the capital is located were all named after slave-owners - gives me more hope for the future than I had yesterday.