Race relations in America: Status quo

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Most Americans believe that a solution to the nation’s problems in race relations will eventually be resolved -- a level of optimism that is essentially unchanged from a year ago, just before the election of the first African American president, Barack Obama.

In fact, the reading on this question, as measured by the Gallup Poll, rests at about the same level recorded when Gallup first asked the question in December 1963. Fifty-six percent of those surveyed see hope -- 55% did four decades ago. ‘In short, despite all that has happened in the intervening decades, there is scarcely more hope now than there was those many years ago that the nation’s race-relations situation will be solved,’’ writes Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll. ‘Still, the similarity between attitudes in 1963 and 2009 masks a good deal of movement on this measure in the intervening years.

Read the full report in the Swamp.