[originaltext]W: For decades, white, Hispanic and black Americans have felt sim

W: For decades, white, Hispanic and black Americans have felt similarly optimistic about their chances of improving their lives and economic prospects. But a study out this week shows that, since about 2006, whites have become more pessimistic. At the same time, blacks and Hispanics have grown more optimistic. Joining me is Matt Barreto, a political science professor at the University of Washington and co-founder of the opinion research group Latino Decisions. Professor Barreto, by so many measures, white families are doing better. You know, simply taken in the aggregate, the socioeconomic measurements are just better. Why so much pessimism?
M: Well, I think it reflects what we call a ceiling effect, and that is that whites have been doing better for a very long time. You can go back to the post-World War II era, when whites really started moving into the suburbs and the upper middle class, and so they have occupied that top rung of doing better for a very long time. And now as they start to evaluate their position, I think a lot of white Americans are saying we don’t see ourselves growing anymore. We have been at this top rung and we’re not growing. And instead we see other groups are also growing. And that leads to a little bit more pessimism in their own reflection of their group, that perhaps they have already achieved the highest rung that they’re going to achieve.
W: Conversely, black and brown Americans are more likely to be unemployed, less likely to have a college credential, by a lot of socioeconomic metrics, just doing worse. How do you explain the optimism?
M: Easy.
I was speaking when I was doing research to a guy named Dave Thomas, who is a business school professor at Harvard, and he used the phrase "irrational exuberance" to explain what we were then picking up in the polls, because this poll finding is not new. It goes back several years. And in essence, part of it that what African-Americans are looking at and Latinos as well is aspirational. They’re looking at the future. We have gone, as Matt basically said, from being a country that was basically and totally dominated by whites to something very different now. And so for the first time you have African-Americans who are saying it’s possible to break through some of these ceilings that it was impossible to break through a generation ago. And when you’re talking about the future, the fact that unemployment for African-Americans has been roughly twice what it is for white Americans pretty much forever, mat doesn’t affect how you see the prospects for your child, because you say my child might be able to become a CEO of a corporation. My child may be able to become a big talk show host My child may be able to become president of the United States. That’s something you couldn’t say a generation ago, and that’s revolutionary.
This is the end of Conversation Two. Questions 6 to 10 are based on Conversation Two.
6. How optimistic are Americans now?
7. How are white families doing now?
8. What is ceiling effect?
9. Why are Latinos more optimistic?
10. According to the man, what may happen to the black in the future?