RACE RELATIONS POOR, SAYS POLL OF BLACKS, WHITES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 4, 1993                   TAG: 9304040151
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: ATLANTA                                LENGTH: Medium
RACE RELATIONS POOR, SAYS POLL OF BLACKS, WHITES
Twenty-five years after Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, more than half of black and white Americans rate the nation's race relations as poor, and blacks and whites remain deeply divided on economic issues like preferential hiring and promotion of minorities.
The findings in a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted March 28-31, as well as the prevailing sour racial mood, in which the name King today more often summons up Rodney King than the slain civil rights leader, provide a gloomy counterpoint to nationwide observances in memory of Martin Luther King's death on April 4, 1968.
Still, the current mood accurately reflects the frustrations of King's final years when he became increasingly aware that addressing the economic and social problems of the black poor across the nation was going to be far more complicated and elusive than mounting the moral crusade that desegregated the South. In recent years a more troubled economy has made these issues even more difficult to address, and has contributed to both increased competition for scarce jobs between blacks and whites and the plagues of drugs and crime in black communities.
"His whole focus at the end was on the economic issues, but no one could have foreseen the levels of cultural decay in American life and the kind of economic slowdown we would face," said Cornel West, chairman of the African-American studies program at Princeton University. "No one could have expected the level of violence, physical and psychic, we see today. It would bring tears to his eyes."
According to the nationwide New York Times/CBS News telephone poll of 1,368 people, only 37 percent of Americans rated the nation's race relations as good. That included 38 percent of white respondents and 27 percent of blacks. Another 55 percent of whites and 66 percent of blacks said race relations were bad. A slim majority of Americans, 52 percent, including 54 percent of whites and 45 percent of blacks, said race relations were better now than they were 25 years ago.
The poll of 1,368 respondents, of whom 1,056 were white and 229 were black, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for whites and 6 percentage points for blacks. The responses from 83 others, who indicated they were of some other race, were too few to be statistically reliable.
On some issues, blacks and whites had sharply differing perceptions. For example, almost half the white respondents who were asked how much real improvement there has been in the position of black people in the past 25 years said blacks had made a lot of progress. Only 29 percent of blacks agreed that there had been a lot of progress, but more than half said there had been some.
The gap between blacks and whites was widest on issues that touched on jobs. When asked if blacks should be given preference in hiring and promotion where there had been job discrimination in the past, 33 percent of all Americans said yes. But while only 28 percent of whites said a preference should be given, 66 percent of blacks said there should be a preference.
Many respondents, in follow-up interviews, said economic pressures and competition between whites and blacks for jobs were imperiling the gains they had seen in their lifetimes.
"When there's economic tension, when there are a lot of people out of work, when people are competing against each other for few jobs and the jobs that do exist don't seem to pay enough to make ends meet, then the old prejudices and hatreds resurface," said Dennis Souza, 42, a white social worker from Somerset, Mass. "That has a lot to do with what we've seen in the last year or so."
Many blacks said the legal gains of King's era had not translated into lasting social or economic ones.
"I was one of the original marchers on Washington, and what I've found is, as far as race relations go now, it's just a facade," said Samuel Butler, 47, of Columbia, Md., who recently left his job of 13 years and sued his employer, saying he was a victim of discrimination. "There are a number of people I've met and talked to here over the last few years especially, who've become victimized by racism."

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB