Trust in Black America: Race, Discrimination, and Politics

5. Trusting Bodies, Racing Trust

| 121 5 Trusting Bodies, Racing Trust 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 how blacks perceive others as far as their behavior and characterizations of these groups’ intergroup relations. For trust assessments, such knowledge networks have the potential for increasing or decreasing trust in others, based on blacks’ interpretations of whether the trustees share similar or dissimilar racial group membership with them. From chapter 4, we learned that blacks perceive nonwhites such as Asian Americans and Latinos more similarly to the way that they perceive their own group members than the way they perceive whites. Blacks perceive racial uncertainty more in their relations with whites. Despite the influence of race on cognition and affection often documented in public-opinion literature, studies that examine trustworthiness often focus on people’s perceived behavior and character, absent of their linkage to race. For example, such studies often account for perceptions of trustworthiness based on whether people are perceived as being likely to fulfill an act either competently, honestly, credibly, fairly, or reliably—all considered characteristics of trust (Hardin 2002); yet these studies lack examinations of how people ascribe these characteristics differently based on race. Studying race and perceptions of trustworthiness offers import because the construction of race has entailed ascribing behavior to racial groups, and this behavior and stereotypes associated with it affect assessments of others. Evidence in chapter 4 attests to these group-based character distinctions. So, we may even ask, is it that blacks conceptualize trustworthiness differently from other racial groups? Do we see that certain trust characteristics weigh more heavily in blacks’ assessments of people than they do in other groups’ assessments ? Moreover, do blacks trust differently depending on the race of the 122 | Trusting Bodies, Racing Trust trustee? If so, is their racialized trust distinct from other racial groups’? This chapter addresses these several inquiries in order to determine the extent of blacks’ racialized trust and the factors explaining it. To develop my analysis, first, I explore how different racial groups conceive trust. Next, I discuss how race influences social capital and what this means for a racial calculus of trust and, hence, the functioning of racialized trust. Then, I discuss evidence in the literature that describes how blacks might trust various racial groups on the basis of their cultural experiences and attitudes about these groups. I segue into an empirical analysis of both intraracial trust (blacks’ trust in other blacks) and interracial trust (blacks’ trust in nonblacks). I also examine how blacks’ prior racial experiences and attitudes about racial groups influence their trust in other groups. In considering how conceptions of trust may influence racialized trust, I test the effect of trustworthiness characteristics on trust in each racial group. To culminate my analysis, I examine how blacks trust in each racial group and compare whether blacks trust these groups more or less than other racial groups trust them. Race in Absentia: Perceiving Trustworthiness without Cognizance of Skin Color To begin our analysis of blacks’ trust, one might ask whether there is a distinctive way that blacks think about trust compared to other racial groups. To tackle this inquiry about whether blacks conceptualize trustworthiness differently from other racial groups, several questions in the NPSS asked black, white, and Latino respondents how much they feel characteristics such as someone’s appearance (how someone looks), being honest (whether someone tells the truth), being competent (whether someone has the ability to get things done right), being credible (whether someone is a good source of information), being fair (whether someone has been known to act fairly), and being reliable (whether someone can be depended on to do things in the future) matter in assessing a person’s trustworthiness. Responses were scaled from 1 = not very much to 5 = very much. Table 5.1 shows results from regression analyses of the NPSS data that suggest , in some ways, that blacks do perceive and conceptualize trustworthiness differently from whites and Latinos. Using blacks as the comparative group and, hence, the omitted category in the table, we see that one’s race as a trustor does in fact influence how blacks, whites, and Latinos in the NPSS perceive trustworthiness. It is interesting to note that, as less likely targets of Trusting...