Race relations worse under Obama, poll finds

A slim majority believes that race relations have gotten worse since President Obama took office in 2009, according to a poll released Sunday.

The poll was conducted for Bloomberg Politics in the days following a grand jury decision not to indict a white New York City police officer who killed an unarmed black man.

{mosads}It found that 53 percent of respondents think race relations have gotten worse under the nation’s first black president.

Thirty-six percent say relations have stayed the same, and only 9 percent say they have gotten better.

Among black people, only 45 percent say race relations have gotten worse, though that figure is still the plurality in the poll. Fifty-six percent of white people think the situation has deteriorated.

The survey found very different views among the American populace of the two recent grand jury decisions not to indict white officers for killing unarmed black men.

Fifty-two percent of respondents agreed with the decision not to indict Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.

But in the New York City case of police officer Daniel Pantaleo, who killed Eric Garner in a chokehold that was caught on a widely-circulated video, 60 percent of United States residents disagreed with the grand jury decision against indictment.