Frank Newport, Gallup
- A majority of Americans, 56%, believe that a solution to America’s race-relations problem will eventually be worked out — a figure that is roughly the same as those Gallup found in the years prior to last fall’s historic election of Barack Obama as president.
Responses to this long-standing trend today are almost exactly where they were in December 1963, when Gallup first asked this question. Fifty-five percent of Americans in 1963 were hopeful that a solution to the race-relations problem would eventually be worked out. Now, some 46 years later, the “hopeful” percentage is an almost identical 56%. In short, despite all that has happened in the intervening decades, there is scarcely more hope now than there was those many years ago that the nation’s race-relations situation will be solved.
Still, the similarity between attitudes in 1963 and 2009 masks a good deal of movement on this measure in the intervening years.
