(Photo illustration by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder).
An Equality Florida survey shows that a vast majority of Black respondents across all age groups and political ideologies are supportive or neutral on transgender rights.
Conducted by HIT Strategies, the poll shows an openness to social acceptance and aims to dispel the narrative that Blacks don’t accept transgender people’s rights, Equality Florida said in a release announcing the results.
HIT is a minority-owned public opinion research firm in Washington, D.C., with a specialty in researching an audience that includes Blacks, Latinos, Asian and Pacific Islanders, women, LGBTQ+, and Millennials.
The agency surveyed 1,000 Black or African American adults and asked them three questions, including: “Do you think greater social acceptance of people who are transgender (people who identify as a gender that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth) is generally good or bad for our society?”
On average 34% said it was “good” or “very good” and another 19% said it was bad or very bad. Forty-seven percent said it was neither good nor bad.
Equality Florida, the largest civil rights organization dedicated to Florida’s LGBTQ community, suggested that together the good and neutral responses suggest “a vast majority (81%) of Black respondents are either supportive or neutral about greater social acceptance of transgender people in our society.”
Breakdown
A closer look shows Black women were more apt to support greater social acceptance, with just 16% responding it was “bad” or “very bad” compared to 22% of Black men.
When broken down by age, the survey shows that Generation X, the cohort of people born between 1965 and 1980, were the least accepting of transgender rights, with 22% responding that it is “bad” or “very bad” compared to 17% of Baby Boomers, between 1946 and 1964.
Baby Boomers are on par with the cohort that could be their grandchildren: Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, with 17% of the respondents from that category agreeing it is bad or very bad.
Meanwhile, 20% of Millennials reported it is bad or very bad.
When broken down by political ideology, the survey shows that 39% of Black Democrats said it is good or very good to have greater social acceptance, compared to 24% of Black independents and 20% of Black Republicans.
The survey, released Monday, proffered a pair of sentiments and asked respondents which they agreed with more: that people should have freedom to identify and live their lives as they “see fit,” or that people identifying as something other than their biological sex is a dangerous ideology that threatens family values.
Sixty-three percent of Black respondents agreed or somewhat agreed with the former statement while 25% agreed or strongly agreed with the latter sentiment. Meanwhile, 12% of the respondents agreed with neither sentiment.
The survey asked respondents to weigh in on two sentiments involving bans in schools, including whether students “should have the freedom to learn about sensitive subjects with the support of highly trained educators” or whether “certain topics should be banned from being taught in public schools if some parents dislike them.”
While 15% of the respondents said they didn’t agree with either statement, 55% said they oppose or strongly opposed educational bans and 30% said they supported or strongly supported bans.
The poll was conducted between Sept. 26 and Oct. 6 with an oversample of adults in the South and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Respondents were surveyed online and by text to web.
All eyes on Florida
President-elect Donald Trump slammed Vice President Kamala Harris on transgender issues during the presidential campaign. Trump and pro-Trump groups spent $95 million in ads from Oct. 7-20, 41% of which had anti-trans messaging, National Public Radio reported.
But in Florida the anti-trans rhetoric began two years before the election.
Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed a strong anti-transgender agenda. Tom Wallace, Florida’s Medicaid director at the time and a political appointee, in June 2022 determined that gender-affirming care was “experimental” and therefore not covered by Medicaid.
Following Wallace’s report, legislators passed a law that precludes any state funds from being spent on gender-affirming care, regardless of a person’s age. That same law prevented physicians from providing gender-affirming care to minors and put impediments in the way of adults seeking care.
The Medicaid rule and state law were successfully challenged in federal court. The DeSantis administration appealed the ruling to a federal appeals court, which is slated to consider the case later this week.
The case has attracted widespread attention from other states and an array of groups as well as the federal government. Even though Trump has won back the White House, attorneys representing the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services asked in late October to present arguments at next week’s court hearing on behalf of those who sued Florida.
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