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Poll Results: Blacks and Whites See Future of Race Relations Same as 1963

By Carmen D. on Thursday, October 29th, 2009, 11:43 pm Comments

Gallup is at it again, seeking to quantify racial attitudes that are hard to measure. I’ve never been called by Gallup, but if they asked me questions regarding future racial healing, I would likely give starkly different answers depending what was going on for me at the moment. Some days I’m hopeful, some days not as much. So I wonder what was going on with these respondents when they picked up the phone?

PRINCETON, NJ — A majority of Americans, 56%, believe that a solution to America’s race-relations problem will eventually be worked out — a figure that is roughly the same as those Gallup found in the years prior to last fall’s historic election of Barack Obama as president.

National Adult Trend: Will White-Black Relations in U.S. Always Be a Problem, or Will There Be an Eventual Solution?

gallup

Responses to this long-standing trend today are almost exactly where they were in December 1963, when Gallup first asked this question. Fifty-five percent of Americans in 1963 were hopeful that a solution to the race-relations problem would eventually be worked out. Now, some 46 years later, the “hopeful” percentage is an almost identical 56%. 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. Source: Little “Obama Effect” on Views About Race Relations

The Gallup report goes on to note how much attitudes have varied over the years, and specifically notes the OJ acquittal in 1995 as being a downer on projections of improved race relations.

What do I think of this report? Not a whole lot. The frame through which we see race relations has changed since the sixties. Blacks and whites back then probably figured that all would have to be well in order for Americans to elect a black President. As we know, race in America is so complex that simple if – then structures just don’t bear out.

Further, one of my most astute twitterfriends Ludovic Blaine (@LudovicSpeaks) also points out Gallup’s Republican/Conservative leaning. At least one study on “house effects ” bears out such a weighting.

What do YOU think of the Gallup study? Can a poll accurately measure racial attitudes?

  • AnonyMiss
    This poll seems really pointless to me.... It's so vague and race is such a complex issue... especially in 2009 and especially in this country where we have people who belong to more than one race (but may only identify with one or the other, or neither) && ethnicity is also an issue that seems to be overlooked. I think they need to come up with better questions/studies to access race relations.
  • uglyblackjohn
    @ twinton - The OJ verdict was as much about class as it was about race.

    IMO - So is the ability to get along with other races.
    When competition for resources becomes more fierce - the habit of forming groups based on race increases.
    Religion, nationalism and other philosopies have attempted to form groups based on thinking beyond these terms to benefit the whole group.
    But even these have developed sub-groups based on race.
  • twiston
    I don't care what anyone says, I still think O.J. was innocent.
  • dawncita
    Can't tell if you're kidding with that comment. As someone who covered the OJ Simpson criminal trial for a major network, and has read almost every book on the topic since then, I must say that there is absolutely NO DOUBT in my mind that Mr. Simpson is guilty of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman.
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