[HelenTay]

A majority of blacks (54%) also report that Obama's barrier-breaking election has improved race relations in America; just 7% say it has made race relations worse. Whites, too, see progress on this front, though by much smaller margins. A plurality of whites (45%) say Obama's election has made no difference to race relations, while about a third (32%) say it has made things better and 15% say it has made race relations worse.
For example, only a small share of whites (13%) say Obama has been paying too much attention to the concerns of blacks. And while whites who score low on an index of racial liberalism have much more negative views of Obama than do other whites, it is also the case that many whites with an unfavorable opinion of the president have more liberal racial views.1


In the Pew Research survey, about two-thirds of whites (64%) say they would be fine with a member of their family marrying a black person; an additional 27% say they would be bothered but would accept it.

Among blacks, eight-in-ten (80%) say it would be fine with them if a family member were to marry a white person, and another 16% say they would be bothered but would accept it. Just 6% of whites and 3% of blacks say they could not accept a black-white interracial marriage in their family.
Seven-in-ten whites (70%) and six-in-ten blacks (60%) say that the values held by blacks and whites have become more similar in the past 10 years. Similarly, a majority of blacks (56%) and nearly two-thirds of whites (65%) say the standard of living gap between whites and blacks has narrowed in the past decade.
Some 43% of blacks now say there is a lot of anti-black discrimination, about the same as in 2001. Among whites, just 13% see a lot of anti-black bias now, down from 20% in 2001.

Moreover, among whites some 21% say that Hispanics face a lot of discrimination. As a result, Hispanics have not only passed blacks as the nation's biggest minority group, they are also now seen by slightly more Americans as frequent targets of discrimination (23% vs. 18% for African Americans). This was not the case in 2001.
But many Americans see a lot of discrimination against another group tested: gays and lesbians. Nearly half (45%) of all Americans (and 55% of all blacks) say they face a lot of discrimination. They are also much more likely to say the country needs to continue to make changes to ensure blacks have equal rights with whites. Fully eight-in-ten blacks (81%) say so, compared with just over a third (36%) of whites. But on a related question, a majority of blacks (52%) now say that blacks who cannot get ahead in this country are mainly responsible for their own situation, whereas only about a third (34%) say that racial discrimination is the main reason. Fifteen years ago, most blacks held the opposite view. Racially speaking, who is Barack Obama?

It depends on whom you ask. Offered a choice, most blacks (55%) say Obama is black, while about a third (34%) say he is mixed race. Among whites, the pattern is reversed. Most (53%) say he is mixed race, while just a quarter (24%) say he is black. Hispanics are even more inclined than whites to see him as mixed race; 61% do so.
However, later in the same survey, when respondents were asked explicitly if they consider themselves to be of mixed race -- fully one-in-six (16%) said they did, including 20% of blacks, 8% of whites and 37% of Hispanics. All taken from the poll:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1459/yea...public-opinion


My personal opinion is that this is a good sign, black and white opinion are converging to some degree on many issues having to do with race far more than at any time in U.S. history I would think.