Views of Race Relations

Lydia Saad at Gallup:

Americans' already tepid review of relations between White and Black Americans has soured since 2018 and is now the most negative of any year in Gallup's trend since 2001. The majority of U.S. adults say relations between White and Black Americans are very (24%) or somewhat bad (31%), while less than half call them very (7%) or somewhat (37%) good.

Most Americans were upbeat about White-Black relations from 2001 through 2013, with the percentage calling them good to any degree ranging from 63% to 72%. The sharp decline in positive perceptions to 47% in 2015 followed numerous high-profile incidents in the prior year of unarmed Black citizens being killed by White police officers.

After improving slightly in 2016 and 2018, ratings of race relations have fallen to a new low in a Gallup telephone poll conducted June 8-July 24, 2020. The nationally representative survey of 1,226 U.S. adults includes an oversample of Black Americans weighted to their correct proportion of the population.

The latest poll was taken after the start of widespread protests on racial justice sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, but before the recent shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and political conflict in Portland, Oregon, that have led to deaths among protestors and counterprotestors.