Americans are sharply divided by race ahead of the first presidential election in which a black candidate will represent a major party, a New York Times/CBS News poll showed on Tuesday,

The poll found that blacks and whites hold vastly different views of Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat who would be the first black president, and are also divided on the state of race relations in the United States, the newspaper reported.

In the survey, 83 percent of blacks had a favorable opinion of Obama, compared with 31 percent of white voters.

On the status of race relations, 59 percent of black respondents thought they were generally bad, compared with 34 percent of whites who thought the same way.

The nationwide telephone poll of 1,796 adults showed that 39 percent of blacks said there had been no real progress in recent years in getting rid of racial discrimination. Only 17 percent of whites

Twenty-seven percent of whites said too much had been made of problems facing black people, while half of blacks said not enough had been made of racial barriers faced by black people.

Actually, the idea that racism is a relic from the American past is silly.  Racism is alive and well in the US, just look back at the much publicized comments and actions from this election cycle.  The problem with pin pointing it is hard, because white Americans will not admit to having the bias.