Assessing Attitudes

By Ronald Roach

Typically, the period between the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in mid-January and the end of Black History Month in February sees serious and sober public discussions about the state of Black America. Those discussions have heated up earlier than expected due to the November release of a national survey on Black social progress by the influential Washington-based Pew Research Center entitled “Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class: Optimism About Black Progress Declines.” The survey highlights Black perceptions of a deepening social split between poor and middle-class African-Americans.

To many observers, the survey confirms unsurprisingly that Black optimism about racial progress in the United States is at the lowest level it’s been in more than two decades. It revealed that one in five African- Americans, or 20 percent, said Blacks fare better now than compared with five years ago; that is the lowest percentage since 1983, when the Pew Research Center found that only 20 percent also claimed improvement in their lives. In 1999, 32 percent of Black respondents reported they believed Blacks were better off compared to five years prior, according to the Pew Research Center.

In a comparison between Black and White respondents, only 44 percent of Blacks said they believe life for Blacks will improve in the future, down from the 57 percent who thought so in a 1986 Pew survey. Whites, however, were nearly twice as likely as Blacks to have seen African-American improvements in the past five years. In addition, 56 percent of Whites said life for U.S. Blacks will improve in the future.

The Pew Research Center survey has proven irresistible to the national media, especially to the reporters covering the Democratic presidential primaries. Given the historic nature of the Democratic race, which is pitting New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, a highly viable female candidate, against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, a highly viable African- American candidate, reporters have used the Pew survey to flesh out how class distinctions among Black voters might play out in the Democratic race.