Change! Most Say Race Relations Worse After Years of Obama-Democrats, New Poll Finds

Change you can believe in.

At the New York Times, "Poll Finds Most in U.S. Hold Dim View of Race Relations":

My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.

— jon gabriel (@exjon) November 24, 2014

Seven years ago, in the gauzy afterglow of a stirring election night in Chicago, commentators dared ask whether the United States had finally begun to heal its divisions over race and atone for the original sin of slavery by electing its first black president. It has not. Not even close.

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last week reveals that nearly six in 10 Americans, including heavy majorities of both whites and blacks, think race relations are generally bad, and that nearly four in 10 think the situation is getting worse. By comparison, two-thirds of Americans surveyed shortly after President Obama took office said they believed that race relations were generally good.

The swings in attitude have been particularly striking among African-Americans. During Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign, nearly 60 percent of blacks said race relations were generally bad, but that number was cut in half shortly after he won. It has now soared to 68 percent, the highest level of discontent among blacks during the Obama years and close to the numbers recorded in the aftermath of the riots that followed the 1992 acquittal of Los Angeles police officers charged in the beating of Rodney King.

Only a fifth of those surveyed said they thought race relations were improving, while about 40 percent of both blacks and whites said they were staying essentially the same....

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,205 people, which focused on racial concerns, was conducted from July 14 to July 19, at the midpoint of a year that has seen as much race-related strife and violence as perhaps any since the desegregation battles of the 1960s. It came one month after the massacre of nine black worshipers at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., apparently by a white supremacist, and after a yearlong series of shootings and harassment of blacks by white police officers that were captured by smartphone cameras.

The Charleston shootings, which took place during Bible study on June 17, generated a national outpouring of outrage and grief. The suspect’s embrace of the Confederate battle flag in Internet photographs prompted South Carolina’s Republican governor, Nikki R. Haley, and its Republican-controlled legislature to order the flag’s removal from the grounds of the State House in Columbia.

But despite the perception that the shootings inspired a moment of empathy and reconciliation, the poll suggests that attitudes toward the flag remain deeply divided between whites and blacks, and not just in the South.

When asked how they regarded the battle flag, 57 percent of whites said they considered it mostly an emblem of Southern pride, while 68 percent of blacks said they saw it more as a symbol of racism. The view that the flag represents heritage more than bigotry was shared by 65 percent of white Southerners, including three-fourths of white Southern men.

About four in 10 whites, and one in 10 blacks, said they disapproved of the decision to lower the flag in Columbia, while 52 percent of whites and 81 percent of blacks favored it. Nearly half of white Southerners disagreed with the decision. Four in 10 blacks said they would be less likely to shop with a retailer who sold Confederate flags and merchandise, but only 17 percent of whites said so.

“The Confederate flag is a part of history that should not just be thrown out the door,” said Mary Nordtome, 66, a white retired rancher from Fort Sumner, N.M., in a follow-up interview. “It really hurts me that we have to be so politically correct in everything.” She added, “Hate groups have distorted what the Confederate flag means and the history we should not forget.”

Mindy Zhu, a 19-year-old college student from Queens who is Asian, said the crusade against the Confederate flag, regardless of its meaning, posed a threat to free speech. “As soon as you start taking away a symbol for something, then you start taking away other people’s freedom,” she said.

In the aftermath of the Charleston shootings, many Americans were deeply moved when relatives of five of the victims told the suspect in the killings, Dylann Roof, at a court hearing that their faith directed them to forgive him. The poll found that about half of those surveyed, including 49 percent of whites and 41 percent of blacks, could not have brought themselves to do the same...

A bare majority agreed with Governor Haley's decision to remove the flag from state grounds --- even after those big majorities saying the flag represents a symbol of heritage. I think that's actually a sign of racial healing and acceptance: that a majority of Americans, despite a symbolic view of the Confederate flag, agreed that it's the right thing to do, removing it from public grounds. (Very similar to CNN's earlier findings on the exact same thing.)

Still more.

For leftists, of course, it doesn't stop there for this insane political correctness. I mean, now Connecticut Democrats are dropping the name of party founders Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from their annual state fundraising dinner. See Rick Moran, at Pajamas, "Connecticut Dems Drop Jefferson, Jackson Names from Fundraising Dinner." You can't fit everything down the memory hole, although no doubt leftists will keep trying. (Via Memorandum.)