Nearly 50 percent of Americans say that race relations in the U.S. “have gotten worse” since President Barack Obama took office, and a mere 15 percent say that race relations have improved under Obama’s tenure, results from an Al-Jazeera and Monmouth University poll reveal.
People’s opinions about the state of race relations differed along racial lines. “White respondents were most likely to say things had gotten worse, whereas African Americans were nearly evenly split on the question,” Al-Jazeera explained.
And presumably because African-American and Latino communities often are subjected to social injustices, they were more likely to say there’s been no change in racial relations.
“Both African Americans and Latinos were more likely than whites to say things had not changed since Obama was elected president, though Latinos were more likely than African Americans to say that things had gotten worse,” Al-Jazeera’s analysis continued.
Nearly 70 percent of blacks and Latinos said that racial and ethnic discrimination was “a big problem,” while fewer than half of white Americans agreed.