AFRICAN AMERICANS INCREASINGLY DIVIDED

PEW POLL RESULT: African Americans Pessimistic about Black Progress in Recent Years & Increasingly Divided.

According to the latest Pew Research Center Survey, "Black Americans are more downbeat about black progress today than at any time since the early 1980s."

When those Blacks surveyed were asked to compare the status of African Americans today with their situation five years ago, only 20 percent felt Blacks were better off today than they were five years ago.

By contrast, 29 percent said Blacks were worse off and 49 percent said the overall situation had not changed.

Whites are nearly twice as likely to feel that Blacks are better off. In the Pew Survey, 37 percent of the whites polled said Blacks are better off today than they were five years ago. However, even the white view of Black progress has declined in recent years. When whites were asked a similar question in 1984, 68 percent felt Black were better off than they were five years earlier.

There may also be class differences emerging between low income and middle class Blacks. Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said the values of low income and middle class Blacks have become more different in recent years while 31 percent said they had become more similar. Amazingly, 37 percent of African Americans reportedly said Blacks can no longer be though of as a single race.

Source: Taylor Media Services