Last year, the day after Barack Obama won the presidency, Gallup found that 67 percent of Americans agreed that the nation's problems with race relations would eventually be solved. It was a highpoint in optimism. About 10 percentage points above where the measure ever stood before.

But that shift in the American outlook, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not signify change. Rather, like all thresholds crossed on race relations, this Obama optimism was fleeting as well.

Gallup reported this morning that 56 percent of Americans are optimistic on race relations. In December 1963, 55 percent of Americans were optimistic. It's a striking finding. Even the extraordinarily significant civil rights legislation of the 1960s did not permanently alter Americans view of the nation's race problems.

But this stagnancy masks a black and white trend. The portion of whites and Hispanics who say that the U.S. race problem can be solved has not depreciated. Blacks view has.

Blacks have generally been far more pessimistic on race relations than whites, a factor of mostly being on the receiving end of prejudice.

But blacks' pessimism was not always the case. Some 70 percent of blacks were optimistic in the early 1960s, a response to the times. But it's blacks who have today let go of the Obama moment, much as their view declined after the 1960s civil rights era.

Today, whites and Hispanics are generally as optimistic about race as they were last year. But black optimism has fallen to 42 percent; that's where it stood before Obama leaped onto the national stage.

The low point in optimism was 29 percent in October 1995, after O.J. Simpson was acquitted of murder. The O.J. incident captured a brief period when whites optimism fell as low as blacks.

A negative moment in race relations appears to sink the public's outlook more than a positive moment, as when Obama was elected.

Still, Americans believe there is less prejudice against blacks. In 1963, 43 percent believed blacks had an equal opportunity to work as whites. Now 79 percent say so. The ceiling on that figure is among blacks as well. Only half of blacks believe they have as good of an opportunity to get a job as whites.

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