David Mastio

USA TODAY Opinion

Everyone who already thought that Donald Trump and his growing crowd of unwashed supporters were a bunch of racists now has confirmation from The New York Times: Nearly 20% of Trump backers nationwide disapprove of President Abe Lincoln’s Civil War executive order freeing the slaves in treasonous southern states.

What a fine end to Black History Month 2016. Confederate values are still with us even though all the Confederates are long and thankfully gone.

But breaking down the results of a poll of 2,000 people’s views into little bits based on a few hundred answers is dangerous business. Those who are hunting for proof of Trumpian perfidy will find exactly what they are looking for, but if you take the time to look a little more broadly, the rest of America doesn’t have an awful lot to be smug about.

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In the same Economist /YouGov poll:

15% of American Hispanics agree with those racist Trump supporters: The Emancipation Proclamation was a bad idea. A quarter of Hispanics are not sure.

32% of American blacks back President Franklin Roosevelt’s decision to round up Japanese-Americans and put them in camps during World War II. According to The New York Times analysis of the poll results, that is almost exactly the same percentage as among Trump voters.

More than 30% of those UNDER 30 are not sure that President Harry Truman’s 1948 executive order desegregating the U.S. military was a good idea. 15% are sure it wasn’t. (Incidentally, those who were around back then, the 65 and up crowd, are significantly more likely to applaud Truman’s desegregation order than kids today.)

43% of likely Democratic primary voters, a very liberal slice of America, approve of President George W. Bush’s pro-torture executive order after 9/11.

So, are America’s Hispanics nearly as racist as Trump supporters? Do a third of African-Americans have it in for their Asian countrymen? Are kids raised in the 1980s and later more resistant to desegregation than Americans born when Jim Crow was a thing? Do liberals love waterboarding?

Uh, no.

Here’s something that might put things in perspective: If you dig deep into the confusing Economist/YouGov online poll, you find that only 71% of American blacks approve of the Emancipation Proclamation. Five percent definitely disapprove of Lincoln’s action and 24% just aren’t sure.

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Maybe that 29% of African Americans is waiting to see how the whole experiment with a slavery-free America turns out. After all, it has only been a century and a half. Still early days.

Or maybe, just maybe, when you dig down into the tiny details of a poorly-designed online poll, the “facts” you find tell you exactly bupkus. That can be enough if you are trying to prove a partisan political point, less so if you are trying to understand Donald Trump's followers.

David Mastio is the deputy editorial page editor of USA TODAY. Follow Mastio on Twitter.