Poll: African-americans doubt progress
WASHINGTON — AfricanAmericans are increasingly pessimistic that progress is being made toward achieving the vision of racial equality outlined by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 50 years ago, according to a survey released Thursday.
In a poll for the Pew Research Center, “King’s Dream Remains an Elusive Goal,” only 26 percent of African-Americans said the situation for black people has improved in the last five years and 21 percent said things have gotten worse. In a 2009 poll, 39 percent saw improvements, Pew said. Today, half said the picture is essentially unchanged.
White people had a much more positive view of black progress, with 35 percent saying things had gotten better in the last five years. However, that share has fallen from 49 percent in 2009.
In the fifth year of Barack Obama’s presidency, Pew researchers and scholars of race relations attributed the pessimistic outlook among AfricanAmericans to the fading glow of Obama’s first term and lingering struggles to emerge from the recession. Pew said that sentiment is now approximately where it was before the recession and Obama’s election.
“The euphoria over Obama’s election and reelection has worn off,” said Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University. “A lot of people assumed that because a number of blacks were elected to high profile offices — President Obama, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Newark Mayor Cory Booker — there would be no more racism in American society. But it involves more than an election to bring about true racial reconciliation.”
Other polls have similarly noted both the buoy- ant optimism expressed by African-Americans in Obama’s first term, and the deflation in hope.
In a series of Washington Post polls, 60 percent of black people surveyed in 2008 before Obama’s election said King’s vision had not been fulfilled. That dramatically flipped by his inauguration in 2009, when 65 percent said it had. But the pessimism returned by 2011, with 56 percent saying King’s dream had not become reality.