For Latino And Black Americans, A Glass Mysteriously Half-Full

By Gene Demby, NPR Code Switch

Over the last few years an unusual phenomenon has kept popping up in public opinion surveys: Blacks and Latinos have become much more sanguine about the country’s prospects as white folks have become more pessimistic. It’s a stark reversal of decades of data in which white folks were almost always more optimistic.

You’d think that the economic landscape — jobs, wages, financial security — might be the biggest indicators of whether people felt optimistic about their country’s trajectory. And that stuff certainly plays a big role. For several years in the early aughts, more and more people across all groups were starting to express more worry.

But between 2008 and 2010, those sentiments started to diverge: Across an array of polls, the nation’s fortunes began to look much rosier to people of color.

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