Only 36 percent think black/white relations are improving

Perceptions about the state of black-white relations in America have fallen dramatically since the summer of 2009. But voters are still more optimistic about that relationship than they are about relations between whites and Hispanics and between blacks and Hispanics.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 36% of voters now say relations between blacks and whites are getting better. That’s down from 62% in July of last year at the height of the controversy involving a black Harvard professor and a white policeman. That number had fallen only slightly to 55% in April of this year.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) now say black-white relations are getting worse, up 10 points from July 2009, while 33% think they’re staying about the same.
African-Americans are much more pessimistic than whites. Thirty-nine percent (39%) of whites think black-white race relations are getting better, but just 13% of blacks agree.

Confidence in the nation’s course among African-Americans soared after Barack Obama’s election. But then several prominent Democrats, perhaps most notably former President Jimmy Carter, suggested that opposition to the president’s health care plan was motivated in part by racism. Only 12% of all voters agreed in September of last year, but among blacks, 27% felt that way and 48% were undecided.