Perceptions about the state of black-white relations in America have fallen dramatically since the summer of 2009. But voters are still more optimistic about that relationship than they are about relations between whites and Hispanics and between blacks and Hispanics.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 36% of voters now say relations between blacks and whites are getting better. That’s down from 62% in July of last year at the height of the controversy involving a black Harvard professor and a white policeman. That number had fallen only slightly to 55% in April of this year.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) now say black-white relations are getting worse, up 10 points from July 2009, while 33% think they’re staying about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on October 4-5, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.