Not sure I believe this

"How serious a problem do you think racial discrimination against blacks is in this country--a very serious problem, a somewhat serious problem, not too serious, or not at all serious?":  This question was first asked in October 1995 and repeated a number of times, most recently in September 2016.  The means, with "very serious" counted as 4, "somewhat" as 3, "not too" as 2, and "not at all" as 1:

There is a decline between 1995-6 and 2008-10, but then an increase.  The lowest value was in November 2008, just about the time that Barack Obama was elected president.  As the title suggests, I'm not sure I believe that there really was a large increase between 2010 and 2015-6.  It seems that answers to this question might be influenced by context--if you ask the question after questions about various kinds of racial inequality, ratings of seriousness would be higher than if it's part of a serious of miscellaneous questions.  Perhaps the surveys were different in this respect.  However, the possibility of a shift is interesting, since most recent commentary on racial attitudes has emphasized the lack of change--for example, a column by Thomas Edsall in the New York Times today said that Obama's health care proposals "hit the wall that often confronts Democratic policymakers: race" and drew parallels to the late 1960s. 

If there was a change between 2010 and 2015, and a further change between 2015 and 2016, why did it happen?  The most obvious possibility would be the publicity given to police violence against blacks, which in many cases was supported by video evidence.  Some people argue that this led to a backlash, with whites rallying around police, but maybe it had a straightforward effect--some people were persuaded that there was a real problem.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]