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Half of black Americans say police have treated them unfairly

Half of African-Americans in the United States say that police have treated them unfairly because of their skin color, according to a new poll.
Hundreds Rally In DC After Grand Jury Decision In Michael Brown Shooting. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
About one hundred demonstrators continue to sing, chant and dance in protest outside the White House hours after the Ferguson grand jury decision was announced in Missouri in the early morning hours of November 25, 2014 in Washington, DC.

Half of African-Americans in the United States say that police have treated them unfairly because of their skin color, according to a survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Taken less than a month before the one year-anniversary of the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, the survey confirmed that black and white Americans are starkly divided in their views of law enforcement.

While 71% of black respondents thought police were more likely to  use deadly force against African-Americans in their communities, 74% of whites said that race had "nothing to do" with why police in their areas used such force.

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Asked to explain why police violence happens, 62% of whites said the primary reason was that civilians refuse to cooperate with police when they are stopped, while 75% of blacks attributed police violence to the absence of legal consequences for police misconduct.

Only a third of whites agreed that the criminal justice system is too lenient on police when they hurt or kill people, compared to 71% of blacks.

Despite these sharp divisions, recent polling has offered few signs that white Americans are growing more concerned with the condition of African-Americans in the U.S.

The AP-NORC poll found that a majority of white Americans who live in diverse communities - neighborhoods where at least 25% of the population is non-white - believed that police sometimes mistreat minorities.

And Americans of all races and ethnic backgrounds have become less satisfied with "the way blacks are treated in U.S. society," according to a Gallup poll released this week.