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INTRODUCTION
On August 28, 2008, the forty-fifth anniversary of the day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency of the United States. No one could miss the symbolic significance of his becoming the first Black presidential nominee on the anniversary of the speech that, more than any other, articulated an inspiring vision of racial equality in the United States.
Much of the commentary on this event depicted Obama's nomination as an important step toward realizing King's dream. Obama himself often situates his political accomplishments within a progressive narrative that presents U.S. history as a series of incremental steps toward the goal of full racial equality, from the emancipation of slaves to the achievements of the civil rights movement to the election of the United States' first Black president. Obama's remarkable political success has, perhaps not surprisingly, stimulated much interest in the question of how much progress we have made toward achieving racial equality in the United States. However, answers to this question often differ depending on the race of the person who is asked. Specifically, the country seems to have made greater progress toward racial equality from the perspective of White Americans than it seems to have from the perspective of Black Americans (Brodish et al., 2008; Eibach and Ehrlinger, 2006; Eibach and Keegan, 2006; Kluegel and Smith, 1986; Sigelman and Welch, 1991).
Nationally representative opinion surveys that ask about racial progress have reliably reported more favorable impressions from White respondents than from Black respondents. For example, the 2000 General Social Survey (Davis et al., 2000) asked, "In the past few years do you think conditions for Black people have improved, gotten worse, or stayed about the same?" Among White respondents, 68% judged that conditions had improved, compared with 53% of Black respondents; 28% judged that conditions had stayed the same, compared with 39% of Black respondents; and 4% judged that conditions had gotten worse, compared with 8% of Black respondents.
The difference between Whites' and Blacks' assessments of racial equality emerged even when the question specified more precisely the time period and index of change. For example, the 1998/1999 Multi-investigator Study...