Adam Nagourney and Megan Thee, International Herald Tribune
- Americans are approaching this first general election with a major African-American candidate for president sharply divided by race, with blacks and whites holding vastly different views of Barack Obama, the state of race relations and how black Americans are treated by society, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.
Black and white Americans are in agreement that the United States is ready to elect a black president, but disagree on almost every other question about race in the poll. Nearly 60 percent of black respondents said that race relations are generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites. Two-thirds of blacks think that white people have a better chance to get ahead in U.S. society; 35 percent of whites said the same thing.
