It has been a year since the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville left counter protester Heather Heyer dead and showed the world that racial tensions still prominently exist in America. A recent CBS News Pollshows that a year later the country continues to be bifurcated by party lines, their view of the president, and their views on race relations.
61 percent of Americans believe that racial tensions have increased, while 10 percent say they have decreased, and 29 percent say they have stayed the same, according to the poll. Broken down even further, 78 of percent black Americans and only 58 percent of white Americans believe race relations have gotten worse. Along party lines, 83 percent of Republicans and 10 percent of Democrats approve of how the president has handled race related issues.
“It is really horrific,” Reverend Emmett Price said about the poll’s numbers on Boston Public Radio Monday.
“The name of this country — if it has a name, I often call it an aspiration. If this country has a name it is called the United States of America. If the three guiding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have an aspiration to it, it is the notion of the we; and we are doing so much to diffuse, to divide, to really discourage the 'we-ness' of this nation,” Price continued.
