In view of this year’s Fourth-of-July celebrations, a poll was conducted asking Americans the following two questions: “On July 4th we celebrate Independence Day. From which country did the United States win its independence?” and “In which year did the United States its independence?” As can be easily expected, the results were rather bad; only 76% of those polled answered Great Britain and only 58% answered 1776. The older, more educated, and more financially well off a person was, the more likely a person was to answer correctly. Males were more likely to answer correctly than females. Oh, and if you were white, then you were 33% to 50% more likely to answer correctly. This makes sense, not only because of the racial IQ gap, but also because whites are the descendants of those who signed the Declaration of Independence and thus have a personal stake and connection to that history not shared by non-whites.
Graphs from the Mail Online article:1
Footnotes
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2010501/Independence-day-Only-58-Americans-know-US-declared-independence-1776.html ↩
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