Poll: 50% of Americans Say Race Relations Have Gotten Worse Since Obama Took Office

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January 21, 2015

By Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele, TheRoot.com

Nearly 50 percent of Americans said that race relations in the U.S. “have gotten worse” since Obama took office and a mere 15 percent said that race relations had 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.

African American and Latino communities seemed to hold very different views on the subject.

“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 black and Latino respondents said that racial and ethnic discrimination was “a big problem,” while fewer than half of white Americans agreed.

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