The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

192
Trust
The question asked in this section was, “Do you personally feel that you can trust
most black/white people, some black/white people, or none at all” In the closed ended
questions, more whites felt that most black people can be trusted (37 percent) compared
to blacks who felt they could trust most whites (15 percent). Most of the white youth felt
that some blacks can be trusted (57 percent) and most blacks felt the same about whites
(75 percent). Only 7 percent of the whites felt they cannot trust any blacks, while 10
percent of the blacks felt no white people could be trusted (Tables 1, 2).
The overall response to this question in the open ended interviews was pretty
consistent. The youth appear to deal with the concept of trust on a different level.
Trusting or not trusting a person is decided by a completely different set of criteria.
Fortunately, one of the criteria is not the person’s skin color. The youth base their
judgments and decisions of trust on a personal basis. And, most importantly, they hold all
people to the same standards. The youth trust people only if they deserve to be trusted;
black, white, or any other ethnic group. An example of quotes from the white youth
highlight this view:
I think I can trust them. It depends on what their actions are or what they
do, not just cause they’re black.
I can trust most of them.
I can trust some of them. Where I used to live I could trust them. We used
to live with a whole bunch of black people.
Just a couple of them. There are very few people that I trust. A couple of
them are black and some are white.
Yeah, it all depends on who they are.