After inauguration of Barack Obama as first black US President, Britain is too ready for the first non-white prime minister, according to a study.
There has been much discussion in Britain in recent years whether an Asian or an Afro-Caribbean could become the country's first non-white prime minister. Britain has a large non-white minority population.
The study by Harvard and Manchester universities shows that there has been a softening of British and American racial attitudes over the last 50 years, creating the conditions necessary for a black prime minister to emerge in the UK.
Ed Fieldhouse, the study's co-author and executive director of Manchester's Institute for Social Change, told The Guardian: "The good news is that in terms of the underlying attitudes of the majority, Britain is in the same place as the United States.
"Whether it is willingness to work for a black boss or to welcome a non-white person into the family, majority British opinion -- just like majority American opinion -- is gradually getting more tolerant."
The project's team includes The Guardian's Tom Clark and the American academic Robert Putnam.
The authors have analysed all available polling from the two countries, including 50-year Gallup series and the poll series British Social Attitudes.
They show that since the 1980s the proportion of whites who admit to discomfort at the idea of a black person marrying into the family has been falling in both nations by around two percentage points each year.
In the UK, since the 1980s, the percentage of people who object to a black boss has fallen by half from 20 per cent to 10 per cent ¿ a similar decrease to that in America.
The study also bears out the fears of senior British figures including Trevor Phillips, the chair of the equalities and human rights commission, that the lack of routes into politics for black British candidates still means the UK lags behind America in the number of black and ethnic-minority politicians.
Putnam said: "Change is taking a similar form on both sides of the Atlantic. Exactly as in the US, the generation of Britons uncomfortable with non-whites in positions of power or intimacy is gradually dying off, and being replaced by its more tolerant offspring.
"It is fair to add, however, that the smaller minority population in the UK, as well as the much shallower pool of black politicians and the more centralised political recruitment paths, still tends to work against black representation in Britain."
