America’s racial rifts are deep, persistent

By GEORGE CURRY

When Barack Obama was elected president, 70 percent of Americans were convinced that race relations would improve as a result. A year later, however, optimism about solving race problems in the United States has dropped to where it was nearly 50 years ago, according to a recent Gallup Poll.

The Oct. 29 poll asked respondents: “Do you think that relations between blacks and whites will always be a problem for the United States, or that a solution will be worked out?” Gallup reported, “Responses to this long-standing trend today are almost exactly where they were in December 1963, when Gallup first asked the 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 percent.”

Maybe that’s why Obama titled one of his books “The Audacity of Hope.” Americans were never more hopeful about race relations than when Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, was elected president. A Gallup poll on Nov. 5, 2008 — one day after the election — found that 67 percent of Americans felt a solution to problems between blacks and whites would eventually be worked out.

A year later, that figure has shrunk by 11 percentage points.

In the 2008 poll, 70 percent of those questioned said they expected race relations to improve as a result of Obama’s election; 28 percent said they expected race relations to get a lot better, and 42 percent expected things to get a little better. An additional 17 percent said they expected race relations to remain unchanged, and 10 percent expected them to worsen.

On the campaign trail, Obama audaciously raised hopes that he could help close the racial divide. In his Philadelphia speech on race, he said “race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now.” He continued, “Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy — particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own.”

As it turns out, far from moving beyond our divisions, America remains a sharply divided country even as it grows more diverse.

Obama has for the most part studiously avoided directly addressing race during his time in office. The chief exception was a comment he made on a confrontation between Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black Harvard professor, and James Crowley, a white Cambridge, Mass., police sergeant. At a prime-time news conference, Obama accused Crowley of “acting stupidly” in arresting the professor for disorderly conduct after the two exchanged words when Crowley went to Gates’ home to investigate a possible break-in.

Obama later softened his language and invited Crowley and Gates to meet with him over beers at the White House. The president said, “My hope is that as a consequence of this event, this ends up being what’s called a teachable moment.”

Sharp divisions

But nothing was ever taught by Obama or anyone else. In fact, blacks and whites were sharply divided over the incident. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that 30 percent of blacks faulted Sgt. Crowley, and only 4 percent blamed Gates. Among whites, it was the opposite: 32 percent said Gates was more at fault, while 7 percent said Crowley was.

Race came up again when former President Jimmy Carter told NBC News, “I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.” Press secretary Robert Gibbs quickly distanced the White House from the comment, saying Obama “does not believe that the criticism comes based on the color of his skin.”

Despite such unequivocal statements, conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have repeatedly tried to paint the president into a racial corner. Criticizing Obama’s appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Limbaugh said Obama is the “greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he’s appointed one.” Beck accused the biracial president of being a “racist” who has “a deep-seated hatred for white people and the white culture.”

Fortunately, the improvement of race relations does not hinge on the attitudes of those on the fringes, left or right — or on President Obama, for that matter. His election a year ago did not usher in an era of racial harmony. It looks as if that’s something we’ll have to accomplish ourselves.

X George E. Curry is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune.