Trust in Black America: Race, Discrimination, and Politics

Notes

| 245 Notes Notes to Chapter 1 1. See “Shirley Sherrod,” Times Topics, New York Times, updated July 22, 2010, http:// topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/shirley_sherrod/index.html? scp=1-spot&sq=shirley%20sherrod&st=cse. 2. Breitbart’s previous fame linked him to video footage that eventually exposed questionable practices within the ACORN organization, which largely supported efforts to assist low-income Americans in various capacities. 3. See “Shirley Sherrod.” 4. I use black, black American, and African American interchangeably throughout this text, with the exception of specific references to black ethnic groups. I use black to refer to people who are African descendants. Much of the literature in black politics assumes that people who are “black” in the United States identify as “African American.” However , this nomenclature can be troubling, considering that blacks can have various ethnic backgrounds, such as West Indian, African, and African American, and African American may preclude any identification people may have with these ethnicities. In addition, blacks may or may not identify themselves as American, or they may even see themselves as having ethno-histories that are different from American blacks, who more often than not have similar ethno-histories with American slavery, Jim Crow, and various forms of institutionalized racism. See Waters (1999) for more information on West Indian identities. 5. This is not to say that whites do not distrust based on race or perceived “reverse discrimination.” For whites, I argue that race operates differently in their trust because historically racial policies benefited their group’s interests. 6. Studies of race and mistrust are more abundant in psychology studies, for example. See the research of Wright 1975; Terrell and Terrell 1984; Terrell and Terrell 1981; and Terrell, Terrell, and Taylor 1981, who study blacks’ mistrust of whites. 7. See table 15 from the U.S. Census Bureau, “Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, 2004,” Racial Statistics Branch, Population Division: http:// www.census.gov/population/socdemo/race/black/ppl-186/tab15.pdf. Additional census data on “black alone” characteristics for 2004 can be found at the following Internet address: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/race/ppl-186.html. 246 | Notes to Chapter 2 Notes to Chapter 2 1. Scholars increasingly note a downward trend in political trust in other democracies worldwide, in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. See Pharr (1997), Dogan (2005), and Adrain and Smith (2006). 2. This anomaly may be occurring because for the first time in American history, an African American has been elected president and is now the “face” and figurehead of America’s government. For many blacks, this is a momentous era in America’s history, considering that at one time being black precluded one from even running for office or voting. It also can be said that some whites may be resistant to this historical change in blacks’ ascendancy to higher office, and thus, they trust an administration led by a black president less. 3. See Shull (1999) for a discussion on twentieth-century American presidents’ records on civil rights. Note that critical race theory scholars argue that the judicial system institutionalizes racism through its court decisions (Crenshaw et al. 1995). 4. Voting is one of the most direct, conventional forms of political participation, perhaps other than one’s holding an elected or appointed office, which involves one in actual political decision-making. More indirect and unconventional modes of political participation include, for example, wearing political pins, signing petitions, writing representatives , or participating in political protests. See also Rosenstone and Hansen (2003) and Verba, Schlozman, and Brady (1995) for more discussion on various forms of political participation in the United States. 5. Schattschneider (1960) describes how popular sovereignty, in practice, is semisovereign because political elites make decisions based on their personal interests, sometimes to the detriment of the masses. For blacks, exclusion from political decisionmaking and from elite-status circles with whites, thus, limited their input in white, political discourse. 6. Brewer and Brown (1998) contend that social categorizations are used in the psychological dichotomizations between “in-group” and “out-group” members. In-group members are those who have characteristics that make them identifiable with a certain group; those who are not members of the in-group, conversely, are out-group members (Brewer and Brown 1998). In my study, I expect that groups and their “groupness,” or “entitativity” (Hamilton, Sherman, and Lickel 1998), affect how people perceive trust in in-group and out-group members. Simply put, group categorizations act as heuristics that...