Barack Obama, the US president, was voted into office on a promise of change, and a wave of hope.

One year after his inauguration, Obama still draws plenty of strength from America's black community, which invested high expectations in his candidacy from the start. But polls show white approval of his presidential performance has faded.

Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman looks into the status of race relations in the US in the first of a series of reports on the first 12 months of Obama's historic presidency from inside America and around the world. 18 Jan 10