Its very apparent that the racial relations in America have taken a major shift backwards. A new poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal shows that race relations in America are the worst they have been in 20 years!
After Barack Obama was elected, 77% of Americans surveyed felt that race relations in the country were fairly good or very good. That being because of the positive energy and hopefulness of minorities after seeing a black man being sworn into office for the first time. Now, in 2015, only 34% of Americans from multiple demographics believe race relations are fairly or very good, according to the WSJ poll conducted this month.
The figure is at the lowest it has been since O.J. Simpson was acquitted on murder charges back in October of 1995, largely thanks to police brutality cases that have ran rampant around the U.S. recently. The confrontations between mostly black men and police officers and the hectic aftermath of these incidents has brought the number down dramatically.
According to WSJ, the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case was the case that brought forth the decline. Since then attitudes about race have been on a never ending decline not just for blacks and Hispanic, who already have more negative views of race, but also for whites. Only 26% of blacks and 33% of whites believe race relations are very or fairly good.
There’s no telling when the attitudes of racial relations will go up. We can only imagine that a very important and promising event would have to take place that would get people thinking more positively about race. With our current climate, it’s hard to imagine as more unarmed citizens are being gunned down by police and protests in general are at all time highs.
What do you think needs to be done in order to move forward from the strong racial divide we currently face?
Source: WSJ, http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/12/16/americans-view-of-race-relations-at-two-decade-low-wsjnbc-news-poll/
TSR Intern: Jalen M!! @jalenmosby on IG.
