Since, as we have mentioned, research suggests that more extreme attitudes are more likely to be influenced by question wording, I next examined the extent to which the tone differences were associated with perceptions of white-black relations in the United States by crosstabulating the responses to Negative Tone and Positive Tone by responses to the following question:

Next, we’d like to know how you would rate relations between various groups in the United States these days. Would you say relations between whites and blacks are very good, somewhat good, somewhat bad, or very bad?

Both the negative tone and positive tone questions essentially make predictions about where race relations will be in the future. The starting point for these perceptions may be the past, or they may be current perceptions. Thus, respondents who are more pessimistic about current race relations should also be more pessimistic about future race relations.

As Figure 4 reveals, differences in optimism across the two wordings is largest at the negative end of the race relations scale. With the positive tone item, respondents who perceived that white-black relations are bad or very bad were more optimistic than those who responded to the negative tone item; yet Negative Tone is statistically related to perceptions of white-black relations, while Positive Tone is not. The results indicate that with these items, question wording has its strongest effects at the negative end of the scale, or, alternatively, not at the positive end of the scale.

To assess how race and perceptions of race relations today interact to influence perceptions about the future of race relations, I conducted a statistical procedure called a logistic regression, predicting a pessimistic response.

Controlling for both race of respondent and perceptions of race relations, the results showed that there was more pessimism in response to Negative Tone and less pessimism in response to Positive Tone. Also, racial differences appeared for both question forms, although the differences between whites and blacks were slightly larger in response to Positive Tone when controlling for race relations. The key difference between the question forms seems to be that the negative tone is significantly related to pessimism toward race relations today, while the more positive tone is not. Thus, it appears that pessimism in response to Negative Tone is due to negativity regarding current race relations, while pessimism in Positive Tone is about the same across regardless of today’s race relations.

Given the current context of group relations in the world, and continuing concerns about race relations in the United States, especially in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, understanding racial progress is vital to realizing the principles of a nation that prides itself as a stronghold of democracy.

The results of the question wording experiment presented here indicate that the public, regardless of race, is very sensitive to how race relations are framed. Individuals tend to be more pessimistic about race relations when they are framed in a negative manner (“problem”) and more optimistic when they are framed in a positive manner (“good”). This pattern is the same for both blacks and whites.

What’s more, the results imply that negative considerations of current race relations are significantly associated with pessimism regarding the future. When race relations are presented in a negative frame, individuals who perceive them to be bad tend to be more pessimistic, whereas when race relations are presented in a positive frame current perceptions are unrelated to future considerations.

The results show that context matters with regard to race relations, but, more importantly, it shows that in the broader social context, public perceptions of race may actually be more optimistic than we think.

David C. Wilson is an assistant professor with appointments in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, and Black American Studies at the University of Delaware.