The majority of Americans say race relations in the United States are bad and are further exacerbating, according to a new CBS/New York Times poll.

About six in 10 Americans, 57 percent, describe race relations in the US as poor, slightly down from April but 13 points higher than the previous several months in the poll.

The number of black and white people, 40 percent, who say race relations are getting worse in the US, is two times as much the percentage of those who think the opposite, showed the poll on Thursday.

The poll is symptomatic of deep skepticism on improvement in race relations with even a higher percentage of African Americans holding a similar belief now than anytime during President Barack Obama's six years in office.

Sixty-eight percent of African Americans say that race relations are deteriorating, compared to 56 percent of the whites.

The poll also showed that 47 percent say Obama, as the nation's first black president, has pushed black people in America father apart, while only 15 percent believe the president has united them.

The poll surveyed 1,205 US adults between July 14 and 19 via landlines and cellphones with an overall margin of error of 3 points, 4 points for white people and 8 points for African Americans.

On June 19, Obama said that the "blight" of racism still exists in the United States citing the mass shooting in a historic black church that left nine African Americans dead.

"The apparent motivations of the shooter remind us that racism remains a blight that we have to combat together," Obama said.

On June 17, a 21-year-old white man opened fire at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, killing the nine African American worshipers.