Voters Still View U.S. Race Relations As A Mixed Bag

Voters of all races nationwide continue to view relations between whites, blacks and Hispanics as a work in progress.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 37% of Likely U.S. Voters think relations between white and black Americans are getting better these days.  Twenty-one percent (21%) feel these relations are getting worse, down six points from 27% this time last year. Thirty-seven percent (37%) say relations between the two are about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

When it comes to whites and Hispanics, 20% feel the relationship is getting better.  Forty-three percent (43%) feel white-Hispanic relations are getting worse. That’s down from 50% last October. Thirty percent (30%) think the relationship is about the same.

Only 11% of voters nationwide say relations between blacks and Hispanics are getting better these days, down from 16% last year.  Thirty-one percent (31%) say relations between blacks and Hispanics are getting worse, while just as many (31%) say they’re about the same.  Another 27% are undecided.

Still, only 17% of voters believe most Americans are racist, down from 24% in January 2008 which suggests Americans think the country has grown less racially prejudiced during the Obama years.

(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls).  Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.

The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 30-October 1, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.