Right after President Obama took office in January of 2009, a whopping 77% of Americans said race relations in the United States was either fairly or very good. Most Americans no longer believe that. The latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll (done between December 6th and 9th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, with a margin of error of 3.1 points) shows that now only 34% of the public says race relations are good (a 43 point drop) -- and that new view is shared by all races.
Instead of ushering in a new era of better race relations, just the opposite seems to have happened. The president's election brought the racists back out from under their rocks, and their vicious racist vitriol is once again open for all to see -- and it turns out there are a lot of them. In addition to that, a lot of institutional racism has been exposed in the last couple of years (police, justice system, schools, etc.).
Even though we passed some civil rights laws and elected a Black president, it is now obvious that we have not solved our racial problems. Race relations in the United States is a mess -- and it will stay that way until decent people of all races join together and fix it. And a very good starting point would be to eliminate racial prejudice in our institutions.
