National surveys conducted by the Institute for Social Research indicate that there has been a steady decline in the last decade in the proportion of white people who see themselves as living in an all white world. Along with the change in perceptions, the traditional white pattern of white attitudes toward blacks also exhibits change, with young people, college graduates, and white people living in metropolitan areas denoting more positive attitudes than those in the South. There are two issues regarding which white attitudes have not become more positive: that of governmental intervention with respect to equal job opportunities and school integration. Black people interviewed also see the racial situation as changing. Black attitudes toward issues of segregation and civil rights are predictably different from those of whites, with very few black people favoring strict segregation of the races at any point during this 10 year period. Black perceptions of changes in race relations differ substantially from those of whites. In general, the data show that during the mid-1960's black people in this country had a strong feeling of change in conventional racial patterns, expressed both in their perception of increased contact with white people and in their sense of real change in their situation. The sense of change for the better has diminished during the seventies. (Author/AM)