Seventy percent of Americans think race relations in the United States are poor, a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds.
The poll, conducted in the wake of a white nationalist protest in Charlottesville that left one woman dead, finds that 28% of people view race relations as “very bad,” while 42% of responders say they are “fairly” bad. Only 26% of those polled say race relations are good in the U.S.
The current view of race relations nearly matches the poll’s record low of 74%, found last year following numerous fatal police shootings of unarmed black men. That figure marked the lowest viewpoint of race relations in the history of the poll.
Of those surveyed, 25% said they approve of the way President Donald Trump has handled race relations in the U.S. Only 20% approved of Trump’s response to Charlottesville, in which the president placed blame on both white supremacists and counter-protestors for the violence, saying there were “very fine people on both sides.” Among black people, only 3% approved of the response.
The poll of 900 adults was conducted between Sept. 14 and Sept. 18. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.
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