Post-Obama race relations: Most hopeful

by Mark Silva

With the election of Barack Obama, the first African American to serve as president, an overwhelming majority of Americans believed that race relations in the United States would improve.

Most still do.

But only 41 percent of those surveyed say relations have improved since Obama's election in November 2008, the Gallup Poll has found - and one in five of those surveyed say relations have gotten worse.

Blacks are more likely than whites to say that relations have improved - 53 percent, versus 39 percent. However, neither think relations have improved a lot.

Yet, "61 percent, nearly as high as the 70 percent seen in November 2008, believe race relations will improve 'in the years ahead' because of Obama's presidency,'' Gallup's Lydia Saad reports on the findings of the Oct. 16-19 survey. "Black Americans are particularly optimistic about Obama's long-term impact, with 79 percent expecting relations to get better. This compares with 58 percent of non-Hispanic whites'' surveyed in the Gallup Poll.

Most Americans surveyed say Obama's election represents one of the top advances for blacks in a nation that shed legalized racial segregation only in the last couple of generations -- if not the singularly most important one -- of the past hundred years.

At the same time, 22 percent of those surveyed say racial relations have worsened because of Obama - and 24 percent believe that "Obama will go too far in promoting efforts to aid the black community, identical to the percentage who last November predicted his policies would go too far,'' Saad reports.

The sentiment underlying all this, from recent Gallup Polls, is that large percentages of black Americans (72 percent) believe racism against blacks in the United States is widespread and half (49 percent) doubt that blacks enjoy the same job opportunities that whites have.

With white Americans voicing "significantly more optimistic assessments'' on both fronts, Saad writes, "the gaps point to a perceptual gulf between the races that may contribute to ongoing racial tensions.

"Although some might hope that the very election of the nation's first black president would ease or eliminate these tensions, fewer than half of Americans believe such strides are already apparent,'' she concludes. "Nevertheless, widespread hope endures that long-term, Obama's election will make a positive difference.

The survey of 1,521 adults conducted Oct. 16-19 carries a possible margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points. The responses for blacks surveyed carry a 6 percent margin, and for whites 4 percent.

See the Gallup Poll on race relations.