The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

181
racial discrimination is getting worse is about the same for whites and blacks (69 percent
of the whites, 68 percent of the blacks). Fifteen percent of the whites felt discrimination
is not getting worse, while only 13 percent of the blacks felt discrimination is not getting
worse. The rest of the youth neither agreed or disagreed with the statement (17 percent of
the whites, 20 percent of the blacks). Tables 1 and 2 at the end of this chapter present
these results.
Support for the responses from the closed ended questions can be found in the
interviews. The majority of the black youth from the interviews indicate that they agree
there is racial discrimination in Woodbury county. Unfortunately, most of these youth
responded with a “Yeah” or provided short responses, such as “Some of them are
prejudiced.” There were a few black youth who felt that there was little or no racial
discrimination in Woodbury county. Again, youth seldom provided justification for their
view. One black youth did respond by saying, “No, because there aren’t that many people
going around with racial discrimination.” There was another black youth that believed
racial discrimination was not a problem in Woodbury county, though it might be present
elsewhere. This view was a common theme among all of the youth — “Not very much
here. I guess in the big cities.”
The Native American youth agree with the black youth that there is racial
discrimination in Woodbury county. Unlike the black youth, however, there was no
variation on the responses to this question. Not one Native American youth, for example,
believed racial discrimination did not exist. The views of the Native American youth are
evident in the following quotes: