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Poll: Blacks Think They're Worse Off

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By HOPE YEN, The Associated Press

Published: November 14, 2007

WASHINGTON - Growing numbers of blacks say they're worse off than five years ago and don't expect their lives to improve, a study released Tuesday shows. Black pessimism about racial progress in America is the worst that it has been in more than two decades, the study shows.

The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center paints a mixed picture of race relations after Hurricane Katrina and the Jena Six case, in which six black teens were charged with beating a white student at a Jena, La., high school

It found just one in five blacks, or 20 percent, said things were better for blacks compared with five years ago. That is the smallest percentage since 1983, when 20 percent also made the claim. In-between, the percentage of blacks who said things had gotten better had grown, only to drop back to 20 percent.

Twenty-nine percent of blacks said things had gotten worse as opposed to staying the same, the largest number since 32 percent made that claim in 1990.

Just 44 percent of blacks, said they expected their prospects to brighten in the future. That's down from 57 percent in 1986, at the height of the Reagan administration, when the Justice Department sought to curtail affirmative action in favor of race-neutral policies.

Whites have a different view of black progress, the survey shows. They were nearly twice as likely as blacks to see black gains in the past five years. A majority of whites, or 56 percent, think prospects for blacks will improve in the future.

"As disturbing as these findings are, in one sense it's surprising they are not actually worse," said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of 200 groups, including the NAACP and National Urban League. "Most African-Americans believe the government response to problems is one of benign neglect rather than forceful action."

In the Jena Six case, some black leaders said charging only black teens was questionable since the beating followed racially charged incidents in which white students hung nooses on a school campus.

Many poor and black people fault the Bush administration for its response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Pollsters interviewed 3,086 people in the continental United States by phone in September and October. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points for the total sample, slightly larger for whites, blacks and Hispanics.

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