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.
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS