Up to 40% of British people do not think those from ethnic minority backgrounds face greater discrimination than white people in areas of life such as jobs, education and access to finance, according to a poll.

Diane Abbott: Twitter has 'put racists into overdrive' Read more

The YouGov poll, shown exclusively to the Guardian, also found that between 14% and 20% of the public think white people face greater discrimination in some areas of life.

Overall, 72% of those polled thought racism existed a great deal or fair amount, 52% thought it existed “a fair amount”, with 20% saying “a great deal” was present. One in five (20%) thought “not very much” racism existed in the UK.

But despite the fact that the majority of those polled believed racism existed in society, when asked whether minorities faced greater, lesser or the same level of discrimination as white people, they were most likely to say “no difference” in almost all areas of life.

Asked about specific areas of life, the majority of those polled thought minorities faced less or the same discrimination as white people in the news (53%), in TV or films (60%), in the workplace (54%), and in access to finance (57%), access to jobs (52%), university (52%), or good schooling (54%). Sixty-one percent thought there was no difference in discrimination faced by people of an ethnic minority background or white people among friends or family.

Four in 10 British people (41%) feel those from ethnic minority backgrounds face greater levels of discrimination when it comes to interactions between strangers.

The findings follow recent ICM research conducted for the Guardian’s Bias in Britain series, which found that ethnic minorities were persistently more likely to have faced negative experiences associated with unconscious bias than their white counterparts.

The YouGov poll surveyed 1,656 adults who were representative of the national population between the 9 and 10 October.

Victoria Waldersee, a data journalist at YouGov, said: “The idea was to essentially try and pin down what exactly people mean when they say racism. We have a lot of discussions in society about what is and isn’t racism, but those discussions can get stuck because people don’t mean the same thing.”

When asked whether objecting to people speaking languages other than English in public was racist, 31% said they did not think so.

Waldersee added: “Some of these results demonstrate that people are a lot more likely to agree that racism does exist [in] one-on-one interactions, for examples interactions between strangers.

“But actually when it comes to the more institutional racism, which is discussed a lot in policy, results show opinion is still a lot more divided. People seem to think it’s a one-on-one issue, instead of an institutional one.”

The poll also showed that most Britons think people in the UK are uncomfortable talking about race. Almost seven in 10 (67%) think people are either “fairly uncomfortable” or “not comfortable at all”, with next to no variation along gender, age, or political lines.

Kimberly McIntosh, policy officer at research organisation Race On The Agenda, said: “It’s welcome news that the majority of the public agrees that racism is still a problem in Britain today. But it’s clear racism and its effects are not well understood. Racism goes much beyond verbal and physical attacks in the streets. People with these same views can use their position, as say, a hiring manager, to discriminate against people at work and hold them back.”

Dr Zubaida Haque, the deputy director of the race equality thinktank the Runnymede Trust, said the research echoed previous findings that there were still significant barriers to equality for minorities. She added that the findings showed “how much further we need to go to get people (including employers and policy decision-makers) to understand that casual, unconscious or overt racist attitudes not only affect BME people’s sense of confidence and belonging, but also has a profound effect on their life outcomes”.