Far fewer Americans see racism as a major problem in the US compared with 13 years ago, a poll released on Monday on the eve of the inauguration of the nation’s first black American president.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that just over one in four Americans still saw racism as a “big problem” today, less than half of the 54 percent who said so in mid-1996, and that a majority of respondents believed race relations would improve during Barack Obama’s administration.
The survey showed broad disparities between how blacks and whites see the issue, however. It said just 22 percent of whites continued to see racism as a societal problem, compared with 44 percent of blacks. In 1970 those figures stood at 52 percent for whites and 70 percent for blacks.
Just over half of blacks said black Americans had achieved or would soon achieve racial equality in the US, while 75 percent of whites said African-Americans had achieved racial equality.
The poll, conducted by telephone from Jan. 13 to Jan. 16 among 1,079 adults, said just as many people today see racial bias in their local communities as did back in 2003, before Obama — the son of a black Kenyan father and a white American mother — hit the national stage.
Forty-seven percent of Americans — two thirds of blacks and 43 percent of whites — said they believed blacks experienced racial discrimination in their communities. The poll was released days after the Washington Post interviewed Obama, who said his election reflected the country’s improving views on race and that Americans should “focus on what we have in common.”
A new CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll said nearly seven in 10 black Americans believed that with the election of Obama, slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s dream of racial equality had been fulfilled.
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Residents across Japan’s Pacific coast yesterday rushed to higher ground as tsunami warnings following a massive earthquake off Russia’s far east resurfaced painful memories and lessons from the devastating 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster. Television banners flashed “TSUNAMI! EVACUATE!” and similar warnings as most broadcasters cut regular programming to issue warnings and evacuation orders, as tsunami waves approached Japan’s shores. “Do not be glued to the screen. Evacuate now,” a news presenter at public broadcaster NHK shouted. The warnings resurfaced memories of the March 11, 2011, earthquake, when more than 15,000 people died after a magnitude 9 tremor triggered a massive tsunami that
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