Poll Finds Optimistic Outlook But Enduring Racial Division
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Thirty-five years after the dismantling of legalized segregation, a majority of Americans maintain that race relations in the United States are generally good, but blacks and whites continue to have starkly divergent perceptions of many racial issues and they remain largely isolated from each other in their everyday lives, according to a nationwide poll by The New York Times. The poll reflected some of the same complex tensions that have surfaced in The Times’s six-week examination of contemporary race relations, ”How Race is Lived in America.” The series has portrayed a stubbornly enduring racial divide, and the poll suggested that even as the rawest forms of bigotry have receded they have often been replaced by remoteness and distrust in places of work, learning and worship. The poll, which surveyed 2,165 adults, detected some signs that both blacks and whites believe race relations are improving. The proportion of those surveyed who said race relations in the country were generally good — 57 percent — was at its highest mark in 10 years, a full 16 percentage points higher than in 1990. Large majorities of both races — 63 percent of whites and 79 percent of blacks — said they approved of interracial marriage, compared with only 44 percent of whites and 70 percent of blacks who said so in a 1991 poll. More : query.nytimes.com |