Age Of Obama: Race Relations As Bad As Two Decades Ago

You don’t say. Noah Rothman had this from just last December

“Both blacks and whites carry enormous expectations for Mr. Obama,” The Wall Street Journal reported in the wake of the president’s election. “A post-election Gallup poll found that 70% of voters think race relations will improve with his election, compared with 56% who thought so five months ago.”

“Many blacks believe Mr. Obama will not only change the way whites see blacks but also the way blacks see themselves — that blacks will shed the stigma of inferiority that has haunted them since slavery, that Mr. Obama will give inner-city black kids new hope and blacks everywhere more opportunity,” the report continued.

That’s from a piece on Americans thinking Obama had failed to live up to his promise to improve race relations (given especially from a speech in the fallout from his 20 years of sitting in Jeremiah Wright’s pews). And now, from a CBS/NY Times poll

Views on race relations hit two-decade low, poll shows

Sixty-one percent of Americans now say race relations in the United States are bad, the highest percentage since 1992, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll, which finds that majorities of both whites and blacks now view race relations negatively.

Meanwhile, 79 percent of African Americans think police are more likely to use deadly force against a black person than a white person, but 53 percent of whites say race does not play a role in such instances.

Here’s the full poll

CBS News Poll: Race Relations

Back in 1992, in the wake of Rodney King and the riots, the poll showed that 68% thought race relations were bad. Jump forward to today, and 61% think they are bad. That’s also a jump from just 22% thinking race relations were bad in April, 2009 (it’s interesting that this poll was never taken while Bush was president. Or at least published). 65% of Blacks think relations are bad, and 62% of Whites now feel the same.

Only 17% think relations are getting better. 37% say staying the same while 44% say getting worse. Why? The poll seems to be aiming at what happened to drug dealer and career criminal Freddie Gray (it certainly seems like the Baltimore PD, led by Democrats/Liberals, did wrong, to say the least).

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

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