Americans say race relations in the U.S.have improved significantly since the summer of 2020, amid protests calling for racial justice and police accountability after George Floyd’s death.
But deep differences in opinion remain, particularly between white and Black Americans, according to a new NBC News poll.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.The poll — which was sponsored by More Perfect, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to advancing democracy — finds that 50% of Americans say race relations are generally bad, while 48% say they are generally good.
The share of Americans who say race relations are good has increased by 20 points since July 2020.Just 7% of all adults say race relations are “very” good, though that is the highest level measured in NBC News polling since 2011.And 17% of poll responders rate race relations as “very bad,” the lowest in more than a decade.Most of the responses clustered toward the middle, with 41% calling race relations “fairly good,” up 20 points since 2020, and 33% calling them “fairly bad,” down from 39% in 2020.But the underlying data, along with conversations with more than a dozen Americans who participated in the survey, underscore how views of race relations vary widely depending on a person’s race.
While 46% of white Americans say race relations are “fairly good,” 24% of Black Americans say the same.A similar share of white and Black adults, about one-third, rate race relations as “fairly bad.” But the biggest difference is with those who think relations are “very bad” — 15% of white Americans compared with 36% of Black Americans.
Halin Byrd, a 22-year-old Black man from Pennsylvania who participated in the survey, said he believes race relations in the country “have regressed.” “Everybody just feels like they can just say whatever they want, for any type of racist slur.Everybody’s more comfortable now,” said...