Americans’ view of black-white race relations hits a 20-year low

AMERICANS HAVE rarely felt gloomier about the state of race relations. A new poll from Gallup shows that perceptions of black-white relations are at their lowest in 20 years. Conducted between June 8th and July 24th, it found that just 44% of Americans say relations between the two groups are very or somewhat good, compared with 55% who say they are very or somewhat bad. That Americans’ views are particularly pessimistic now—an election year in which the two big parties have taken opposing stances to racial unrest—is not surprising. In fact, they are part of a longer trend.

Not long ago, conditions were more harmonious. In 2013, more than two-thirds of respondents described relations between black and white Americans as very or somewhat good. Attitudes quickly shifted as police killings of black Americans attracted national attention. After the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown in 2014, each of which offered their own Black Lives Matter rallying cries—“I can’t breathe” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!”, respectively—assessments of race relations plunged. By the following year more Americans judged black-white relations to be bad than good.

Views improved in 2016, thanks in part to fewer high-profile killings of black Americans by police. But after Barack Obama, America’s first black president, was succeeded in the White House by Donald Trump, opinions sharply diverged along ideological lines. When polled in 2018, conservatives told Gallup that race relations had improved during Mr Trump’s first year in office; liberals and moderates said they had worsened. Older and less-educated Americans tended to agree with the former view, younger and more educated folk with the latter (see chart).

Today, after the killing of George Floyd in May and the nationwide protests that followed, people of all political stripes agree once again that race relations have deteriorated. Almost one-fifth of Americans reckon that race or racism is the most important problem facing the country, a level of concern that has not been reached since the 1960s (see chart). There is, however, one glimmer of hope: 59% of respondents believe that a “solution will eventually be worked out” to improve black-white relations, a figure which was only exceeded the day after Mr Obama’s historic election.