Race relations are now worse in America... despite nation's first black president.

 Change for the worse: Mr Obama's hopes for a more unified America have been dashed as a survey reveals the race divide has increased since he entered office

Hopes that race relations in America would improve with the election of the nation’s first black president have been dashed - with figures showing that the situation has actually worsened in the past two years.
A new poll found that just 36 per cent of voters now believed that relations between black and white was getting better.
This is compared with 62 per cent a year ago and 55 per cent in April.

President Barack Obama among supporters at a campaign rally for Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley at Bowie State University today.
According to the Rasmussen survey, black respondents were less optimistic - with just 13 per cent believing that understanding between the races was heading in the right direction, compared to 39 per cent of whites.
Confidence that America had broken through a major race barrier with Mr Obama’s election two years ago appears to have sunk along with the popularity of his administration.
Washington analysts believe voters became more polarised as jobless figures continued to rise, the economic recovery remained sluggish and the Democrat-controlled government pushed through unpopular health and financial reforms.
It didn’t help when several prominent Democrats - most notably former president Jimmy Carter - suggested that opposition to the party’s healthcare overhaul was motivated by racism.
One senior analyst said: 'After all the euphoria of the election there was this massive deflation of hope when voters realised Obama wasn't going to be the answer to all their dreams - and put the country back on track with the wave of a wand.
'It was about that time that people kind of reverted back to some of their old prejudices.
'It's not that the country hasn't made great strides in race relations because it has. It is just that peoples' more benevolent natures don't always come out when they are scared about what the future holds.'
A backlash against the president is expected to lead to a landslide victory for the Republicans in next month’s mid-term elections.
Rasmussen claims that 27% of Americans now believe that black and white relations are actually deteriorating, up by 10% from last summer, while 33% think they are about the same.