JMO, 50 years of racial relations improvement have gone straight down the crapper during the Obama administration. When you have legislators and pundits claiming opposition to his policies were racially-based, it only goes downhill from there. With the media homing in on notable killings of blacks by cops or others since Trayvon Martin and looking for any sort of racial protests, this is why the divide has grown.
Interesting conversation, I'm not trying to give a lecture because I don't know anything you don't. But I have had many interesting conversations on race with many different people and been forced to think about it, or at very least hear their perspectives (hey, I have a black friend!). From my arms-length perspective, race relations haven't "gone straight down the crapper," but rather we have not been allowed to sit back and believe everything is fine. Simply because I didn't see it on TV, doesn't mean there wasn't a problem before. From 1920-1950s race relations appear fine, until they got all uppity in the 1960s --- or rather the civil rights movement began speaking up in the 1960s after their fathers served in WWII.
I think we are seeing the same basic feeling. Racial equality in the eyes of the law improved immensely two generations ago --- recall marrying a person of a different race was illegal in Oklahoma until 1967, and only then because of a Federal Judge (1960s was now 2 generations ago for today's college kids). But racism didn't go away: it shifted, it changed, it molded itself - but I doubt it ever really goes away. People look different, act different, and stereotypes apply. When that becomes institutional, it is racism to varying degrees.
I don't think it was the media reporting on Malcom X or Martin Luther King that caused the divide to grow then, and I don't think it is media coverage of police killings doing it now. The media is inherently lazy. Show them a story line, and they will run with it. Police vs. Black People is a nice, neat, easy story line. The truth of the matter isn't the point of the nightly news.
How many whites, Asians, and Hispanics have been killed by police in the last 3-4 years?
Police report killing about 1,000 people per year in the US (fwiw, about 56% of those are armed with a gun). In the last 5 years the number of killing have broken down approximately like this:
White: 2,450 people, 49% (proportional to population would be 3130)
Black: 1,500 people, 30% (660)
Hispanic: 950 people, 17.1% (855)
Asian/other: 100, 2% (355)
More white people were killed by police, but in that white people make up 63% of the population and black people make up 13% of the population - it should be nearly impossible to reverse those numbers. As it stands, the number of dead black men is some 2.3 times higher than one would expect. A black kid between 15 and 19 is twenty-one time more likely to be killed by police than a white kid in the same age group.
Now, you could argue that there are a number of reasons for that. Social issues, economic issues, education issues - items that lead to more confrontations with police officers, more likelihood of carrying firearms during those confrontations and things other than the color of their skin that led to the death rate. BUT...
Black men make up 6% of the population, and account for 40% of unarmed people killed by police officers.
If cyclists made up 6% of the road traffic, but 40% of the deaths caused by traffic collisions with police officers --- you'd find that number extremely concerning. Even though you can list any number of reasons why a cyclist may be more likely to be killed on the road by an officer. The simple, giant disparity in numbers is tough to swallow --- even if you can't pinpoint why it is happening.
I don't agree with the Black Lives Matter people. But I get what they are trying to do and I'm glad they are doing it. If a segment of our population is mad and feels like they are being mistreated - I'd rather they speak their mind. I don't think it is necessarily a signal that relations are truly deteriorating.
Sources:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/21/police-kill-more-whites-than-blacks-but-minority-d/?page=allhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/investigative/2015/12/26/a-year-of-reckoning-police-fatally-shoot-nearly-1000/http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/the-real-story-of-race-and-police-killings/?_r=0https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_Stateshttp://www.lovingday.org/legal-map