Blacks, Race | featured news

Ask Americans how race relations have changed under their first black president and they are ready with answers. Ashley Ray, a white woman, hears more people debating racial issues. "I know a lot of people who really thought we were OK as a nation, a culture, and now they understand that we're not," she says.

At the height of his career in Congress, Newt Gingrich used to tell audiences that renewing American civilization was "the central challenge of the rest of our lives." But before Gingrich could deliver his grand new theory of American civilization to the public in a 1993 speech, his deeply divisive racial stereotypes would need to be removed.

The wealth gaps between whites and minorities have grown to their widest levels in a quarter-century. The recession has erased decades of minority gains, leaving whites with 20 times the net worth of blacks and 18 times that of Hispanics.

As China gets ready to welcome the first African American U.S. president, Chinese are confronting their attitudes toward race, including some deeply held prejudices about black people.

President Barack Obama had a tough-love message for fellow African-Americans on Thursday, urging black parents to push their children to think beyond dreams of being sports stars or rap music performers.