As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to take office, far fewer black and white Americans say they view racism as “a big problem” in American society than said so in mid-1996, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
With the nation poised to inaugurate its first African-American president, the survey found that just over a quarter of all Americans said they see racism as a large societal problem, less than half of the 54 percent who said so about a dozen years ago. Americans have high hopes that Obama — who is of mixed-race parentage but refers to himself as African-American — will inspire an improvement in race relations.
But even as declining numbers of Americans see racism as a big problem for the country, there has been little change in the amount of racism people perceive in their communities. The survey found that there has been little change over six years in the proportion of African-Americans who said they have experienced racial bias in housing, employment and other areas.
“There are two levels of identity with racism,” said Ron Walters, a University of Maryland political scientist. “One is the national level, which is more symbolic. And the other is how they parse it in terms of their lives.”
Often, he said, people channel the experiences of family and friends as they develop their views about racism. “If I have a brother who is pulled over by the cops, it influences me almost as much as if it happened to me,” Walters said.
In the new survey, 44 percent of blacks and 22 percent of whites continue to see racism as a large societal problem. In 1996, 70 percent of blacks and 52 percent of whites held that view.
Conversely, 28 percent of whites and 15 percent of blacks in the new survey said they see racism as a small problem or no problem at all.
Meanwhile, more than four in 10 Americans said they have been discriminated against. Nearly three-quarters of blacks said that was the case, as did three in 10 whites.
Still, a majority of Americans are optimistic that race relations will improve under Obama.
In an interview Thursday with the Washington Post, Obama called his election evidence of evolving views on race.
“What I’m trying to do is say, ‘No, let’s see if we can apply empathy and recognize that America probably has a narrower spectrum of differences than any other advanced country,’ ” Obama said. “. . . Let’s focus on what we have in common.”
The poll was conducted by conventional and cellular telephone Tuesday through Friday among a random national sample of 1,079 adults. The margin of error is 3 percentage points overall and 7 percentage points for African-Americans.
