Trust in Black America
Race, Discrimination, and Politics
Publication Year: 2012
Published by: NYU Press
Cover
Title Page, Copyright Page
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
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pp. vii-ix
Having grown up in Petersburg, Virginia, I came to understand race easily. For my elementary and secondary education, I attended predominantly black public schools in the city. In a yesteryear, pre-1965, I would have attended an all-black, segregated school, but in the context of a city that had approximately an...
Part I: Understanding Race and Trust
1. Introduction: Race, Risk, and Discrimination
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pp. 3-23
In July 2010, American television media revealed seemingly controversial footage of Shirley Sherrod, a black American woman and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Rural Development agent in Georgia, speaking about her being unable to treat a white farmer fairly. The videotape featured Sherrod’s March...
2. Explaining Blacks’ (Dis)trust: A Theory of Discriminative Racial-Psychological Processing
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pp. 24-54
Trust is capital (Putnam 1993, 1995, 2000a). Anyone who is trusting, trustable, or trustworthy is empowered to fulfill actions on behalf of others, although fulfilling one’s self-interest often involves trust also being reciprocated by others (Coleman 1988, 1990; Putnam 2000a; Hardin 2001; Hoffman 2006). As an...
Part II: Racial Internalization
3. Being Black in America: Racial Socialization
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pp. 57-89
As a young black person, I was always told by my grandmother to get a bag from the store clerk whenever I made a purchase (no matter how small or big the merchandise). She told me this because she was socializing me about race and preparing me to avoid experiencing racial discrimination. In her view...
4. Trust No One: Navigating Race and Racism
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pp. 90-120
It would be ahistorical not to acknowledge that much of the fret about racial discrimination rests among nonwhites, who in the American racial hierarchy have been historically and socially constructed as the negation of whites and deemed inferior to them (Bonilla-Silva 2001; Pickering 2001). Therefore, it comes as...
5. Trusting Bodies, Racing Trust
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pp. 121-151
In the previous chapters I examined how blacks’ perceptions develop based on racial knowledge networks that inform their cognitive and affective judgments about people. In particular, racial socialization, racial identity, racial discrimination (retrospective and prospective), and racial stereotyping all influence...
Part III: Racial Externalization
6. The Societal Context
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pp. 155-190
Given blacks’ discrimination experiences in almost every aspect of life, one might wonder why blacks would even trust at all. But do we see that there are specific social contexts wherein blacks are more socially trusting than in others? Furthermore, do blacks interpret the race of social actors differently...
7. The Political Context
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pp. 191-225
In chapter 6, I examined the effects of internalized racial knowledge on blacks’ navigation of their social contexts. Whereas racial socialization experiences influenced some perceptions of racial actors, racial uncertainty had no influence whatsoever on blacks’ social trust. We learned that blacks trust people...
8. Conclusion: In Whom Do Black Americans Trust?
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pp. 226-240
Trust is supposedly the glue that makes democracy work. Normatively, citizens who trust connect with other citizens and participate politically in ways that build stronger linkages to government. Democratic theory supports this relationship, predicting that popular sovereignty enhances government...
Appendix A: NPSS Descriptive Statistics of Survey Sample
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pp. 241-
Appendix B: Survey Sample and U.S. Census Quota Matching
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pp. 242-243
Notes
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pp. 245-250
References
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pp. 251-271
Index
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pp. 273-285
About the Author
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pp. 286-
E-ISBN-13: 9780814759301
Print-ISBN-13: 9780814758656
Print-ISBN-10: 0814758657
Publication Year: 2012
